March 2024
Jack e Lorts
jlorts1940@gmail.com
Bio Note: I am a retired educator who has appeared widely, if infrequently over the past 50+ years in such publications as Arizona Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, English Journal, Agnostic Lobster, Rattle, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse-Virtual and Verse Daily among others. Author of four chapbooks, my most recent book is "Ephram Pratt & A Space of Ignorance." I've been active politically over the years, was a Hillary delegate to the Democratic National Co invention in 2008, & served ten years on the Fossil, OR City Council, along with six years as Mayor.

Ohtani Signs with the Dodgers

Shohei Ohtani signs with the Dodgers
For $700,000,000.
There’s got to be a poem in there somewhere.

Enough money to run a small country:
American Samoa? Liechtenstein?
To feed all the homeless in Portland
for several years? To build homes
for all the homeless in Chicago?
To solve cancer? To solve the global
warming crisis? To support the arts
the world over. Or cure muscular dystrophy.
Or to support one baseball player for one 
baseball team? Unfortunately, it ought to be the
Los Angeles Angels, certainly not the Dodgers. 

Shohei Ohtani signs
with the Dodgers for $700,000,000.
There’s got to be a poem in there somewhere.
©2024 Jack e Lorts
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL