EPHRAM PRATT REMEMBERS TWISTING & TURNING by Jack E Lorts

EPHRAM PRATT REMEMBERS TWISTING & TURNING
by Jack E Lorts 

Ephram Pratt Speaks of Whispering

Quiet the noise
of the carburetor,

or is it a carbuncle
he asked,

in muted silence,
of a passing

stranger,
one with shaggy locks,

looking as if
his eyes emerged

from an errant
abandonment.

Cross your fingers
or your eyes

is what the stranger
whispered

in that language
known only

to choristers
chanting in unison

to the priests
and priestesses

of a sect
known only to shadows.

Ephram Pratt Examines What Happened on the Border

Evidently
he felt the need

to adhere to
the commandments

enumerated in
the 29th chapter

of Hepatitis.
The opening phrases

warned him
of a coddled irrationality

rampantly engaged
in crossing

what needed to
be entered into

by soft caution,
illegitimate dogmatism,

fossilized impunity
and unlicensed irregularity.

Cross out
all the regulations,

he whispered,
as faux lime encrusted

talismans
swung from her lips.

Ephram Pratt Remembers Twisting & Turning

Etched & electrifying
as a song

buried in an iodine
lake,

twisting & turning
in silence,

twisting & turning
in a bud vase

the size of
Abner Doubleday’s

wine bottle.
Don’t let the voice

of the windmill
take sides in the argument

between balls of yarn
and rolled up

copies of the
New York Times.

It’s all because of
isolated sounds

heard in the voices
of angry angels

twisting & turning
in the wind.

About the Author:

Jack e Lorts, a retired educator, lives in a small town in eastern Oregon. His work has been published widely over the past 50+ years in such places as Arizona Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, English Journal, and more recently online at Haggard and Halloo, Locust, The Poetry Village, Poetry Breakfast, etc. Author of three earlier chapbook, Uttered Chaos Press of Eugene, OR recently published his “The Love Songs of Ephram Pratt.”