Condense the oceans
of soft delight
and winnow them
into dying streams
draining the mountains
of regret
from what everyone
knows should happen,
to the answers
received in sad numbers
by vagrant mining claims
of burning illicit waste,
like fulminating in
the beds of soft pickups.
Line the highways
with loud noises
trucking in the last
of the vinegar rebellion,
standing in silence
behind the mountains
and palisades of
an illuminated despair.
Jack e Lorts, retired educator, has published widely, if infrequently, since the 1950s & 60s in such places as Arizona Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, English Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Chiron Review, High Desert Journal, Phantom Drift, Tipton Poetry Journal and many other places, as well as online with Haggard and Halloo, Misfit, Locust, Eunoia Review, Verse-Virtual, verse day, etc. Author of three earlier chapbooks, The Daughter Poems & Others and The Meeting Place of Words (Pudding House, 2008 & 2010) and Dear Gilbert Sorrentino & Other Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2011). His book The Love Song of Ephram Pratt appeared from Uttered Chaos Press in 2019. His manuscript A Space of Ignorance with Ephram Pratt is in search of a publisher.
Eunoia Review 