Octopus Buddhas and Aliens: The Story of Tako Yakushi

One of my favorite films about aliens is Arrival (2016), based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (1998). It portrays otherworldly visitors as enlightened extraterrestrials with a literally timeless grasp of language and causality. Aside from being spacefaring travellers and inhabiting spacecraft that leave no residue, traces, or pollution, the advanced creatures of Arrival perceive time […]

Echolocation

I want to find youWith my sound, empty and Marvelous, in the void, givingYou shape with nothing else Except the idea of your molecules.Every jewel, each note, contains The reflection of all the others. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary […]

bow

to every creature drawn to this fleeting moment,       the period we have to appreciate each other is nearly over. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have […]

The Chickadees

do not land in my palm because they trust me. I am a phantom they barely notice. They sense my body heat, the blood coaxed through my thin veins like tree sap, and they hear my vibrations, the way Beethoven coped with going deaf, stopping long enough to bathe their tawny-colored tongues with seed, crushed seashells of safflower and thistle, […]

The Sturgeon

The mechanics of suffering is not so daunting to understandit hurts for a while-gums and bellies pierced byan unseen passion… and then it is donethe savory-sweet, cherry cough syrup scentof death dries and disappears, leavingonly impressions in the ample depth of sand George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included […]