is copper infused tulipsfloating in mineral water,tilting under a Himalayan salt lamp. Pray and be kind to it. Play Otis and Mozart for it.Treat it like a friend who you always want to go out with.
George Cassidy Payne
As Benedictines
We see a single incandescent light beneath the pond,a flash at the bottom of four stemmed glasses, as if we were still in the Orleanais,where sins are garnished with clams and stewed in the finest vichyssoise.
Stormy Night
There is a loneliness to hail dropson a tin-roofed cabin. The woods and flowers and secrets ofmountains are lonely. So are the trails, ponds, and bridges; the vanished sources looking for a beginning. Dripping drops a million years in the making. Falling asleep in the wounded soil of dreams.
Heaven and Earth
I am left timeless. My skin is timeless. Like the rusty mercury gauge in an old Chevy. I am gazing upon Christ. I am aggressive.My density is aggressive. I am an out of body experience. My blood pressure drops to zero. I am a cardiac arrest. The feeling of absolute resolution. I am the hangings, shootings, and burnings. I […]
my favorite cage
is made of porcelain white bars, surroundedby ringlets of fire, red hot and orangeas daisies consumed bythe summer sun. Those cornerless bars, alive and fierce as fractals, daring me to eclipse my freedom.
Another Letter to the Editor
I think I know whyI like this piece. It’s what I strive forin everything I do. It disrupts everyone. From Generation Z to the Greatest Generation, this one has something to unnerve and destabilizeeveryone’s moral justice. No quarter. Almost no socialor political allegiance. Just one man’s interpretation based on experience. There is a certain purity in that which makes […]
Holy of Hollies
It is written that the almondsprung from thegenitals of theNear Eastern Goddess Cybele. And I thought that Iwas just eating nuts. They say that woman’sessence is in apricots and scallops, and floatslike the lotus and lily. But like some *sshole, I thought you were a ringto wear, some black stoneto venerate. I consecratethe stone and tried to wear it,like an amulet, makingyou […]
Not Even His Mother
No one could breathe for him.Hauled onto the curb as if he were dead already. Heavy as a bag of sand at a construction site. Still human, sucking the steel-tipped teeth of men. Gathered around his neck. They say that you had enemies.Perhaps he was one of them.They say you had a background. Maybe that is why your mother’s […]
My Turn
When it was my turn to go in,I sat cross-legged by the ventilator and told my buddy goodbye.I could have cried but he deserved more. He deserved what carries no weight.Time. Before the lungs fill with river water and the dream oozes away from the ribs of lotus petals caught between the rocks.
The Last Days of Summer
God is the original face before I was born. The lost part of my brain, drifting across beginninglesslifetimes, bobbing in the embryonic fluid. God is tortoise tracks and prayers bya beachside grave and the last daysof summer. Why the universe is so hot,crowded, and noisy, yet arrives quietly each lonely evening, on my doorstep, a bouquet of suffocating […]