There are those who only have their name to give as thanks.
Have you seen a two year old boy hand his papa an orange peel?
That is what I remember, and Barry’s eyes, too, oddly sweet, gleaming with oil,
glazed and losing. Admitting with his palm, thirty of the filthiest cents I have ever seen,
A sort of proof, I suppose.
“Where are you from?” means “where are you as a person?”
At an intersection, on the corner, by a guardrail plastered with band stickers,
by a highway to nowhere,
I am always home but do not belong.
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 appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Havana Times, South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, and more.
See all his poems on Tea House here.
