One Poem & Two Haiku by Eric Robert Nolan

 

Confession 

 

Poetry is 

Pornography for the heart, 

Lust in the lexicon. 

It is ever The Nude Girl. 

 

At its best, 

It renders white pages into flesh tones and dark downy darts 

Between legs. 

It renders text 

Into sex. 

Mouthing the round words curved by assonance 

Renders them as breasts. 

The firmer consonants 

Slide against the tongue like areola. 

 

And I like it like that -- low and vulgar. 

It should be stuffed under mattresses, hidden in pockets, 

And, at first, glimpsed furtively 

When no one is looking. 

Part of me will never want 

To show poems to my mother. 

 

Catholic School Nuns 

Persuade their victims by rote: 

"Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, 

"Hallowed be Thy Name," 

But vulgar little boys like me 

Hallowed the sounds of vowels 

And clutched at consonants privately. 

 

The Sisters were moving towers. 

Black masts sailing 

Up and down between the desks. 

Their paddles fell like falling spires 

Against the inattentive. 

"Jesus loves me, this I know. 

"The grownups hurt my knuckles, though." 

Curious boys will always 

Eye the girls in the even rows. 

 

I, low, 

Nursed my favourite heresies in whispers, 

Paganism in the pages, 

And easily adopted other Gods. 

I, a secret Heathen, 

Took Poe's "Raven" 

As my inner Golden Calf. 

 

And poetry 

Nurses the sin of Wrath. 

At my desk I told myself 

In inner ceremonies 

I privately hoped 

I'd someday pick the perfect words 

To finally tell God 

I never loved him either.

 

*Most recently published by The Galway Review in April 2022

 

 

2 Haiku

 

 

We fawn over fawns 
until their clipping gallop 
cadences away. 

 

 

*Originally published in a novelty "Mini-book" produced by the Poems-for-All project in 2020

 

 

Demurring under 
timeless, freezing, reeling stars 
is this nascent spring.

 

Eric Robert Nolan’s writing has appeared in 55 publications across 10 countries: the United States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Romania, Turkey, India, Singapore and Australia. His work was also selected for 19 anthologies, two chapbooks and six mini-books. Eric’s more than a half-dozen award nominations include a 2018 nod for Sundress Best of the Net. His debut novel was The Dogs Don’t Bark in Brooklyn Any More, published in 2013 by Dagda Publishing in the United Kingdom. He is a past editor for the dystopian literature journal, The Bees Are Dead, and he was entered in 2022 into America’s Poets & Writers Directory.