Gestation periods vary
like cranium measurements,
doubled by some
and inundated
with slow curves
and sliders,
like in the early days
of Lefty Grove
and Dazzy Vance,
catching lead off runners
asleep and
foolishly anxious.
Look out the door,
see the salient fossils
erasing the
arc of a million tendons,
stretched vainly
between invisible hoops
etched into the ghetto,
like torpedoed oracles,
charting ancient wisdom
into dandelion forests,
aged and callused
like an Andalusian widow.
A retired educator living in a small town in eastern Oregon, Jack Lorts is published in Arizona Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, English Journal, Agnostic Lobster, among others. Poems in his recent surrealistic sequence, “The Songs of Ephram Pratt” are published online in Haggard and Halloo, Elohi Gadugi, Literary Juice, and others.
