I saw her again last night—the old raving woman with the girlish pigtails, trailing bin bags behind her that were visibly overflowing with knickknacks. This time, instead of yelling at me, she targeted my dog. “You evil man,” she told him, “I know what you did!” Her eyes didn’t leave him, even when he started […]
human relations
I Miss You
everywhere, in the hairs on my head and of my body. In my nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, stomach, bowels, mesentery, and excrement. I miss you. Your absence floats in my bile, my phlegm, my pus, blood, sweat, lymph, tears and saliva. I miss you. In the oil of my joints. […]
The Birth of the Sacred Mirrors (for Alex Grey)
Birds settle on a tree for a while,and then go their separate ways again.There is no separate way apart from you.When I breathe, I can taste your breath,ablaze with an all consuming fire.When my heart aches,there is nothing you will not understand.Many have died in this house, but not you. Overtaken by this thing which men […]
I will not be the last man to tell you
your smile,contaminated with purity,contains the sun, moon, and starsIf I were a patriarch, I would order incenseto be burned before it. 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, […]
At a Red Light
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 […]
Restoration
comes with night,a “Womb Flower”, the fountain of her blood, a precious curse cloaking its opulent tarp over the earth tent. In the morning, the dew of ecstasy. 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 […]
Till death do us part
You were still a stranger to me then, when I longed to figure out your secrets, if you had any,before we fell in love and learned how to solve each other’s problems. Once I read a story about the “Wild Boy of Aveyon,” and you reminded me of that poor wolf child, a creature urged on by hunger, digging for […]
Wild Turkey
My father was one who best understood the shy verse of sawdust and steel.When he did speak, after aged bourbon by the charred pepper glow of campfire, his words would bring dryness to the dark, the way engine-oiled machine parts are ordered and arranged under the tongue. I listened. More than he knew. I saw how his words had shapes, how some of them circled through the air, […]
Afterwards
the husband wasrelaxed, as the wifeheld his warm head between her armpitFinishing herself in the half hidden silence, he nearly told her everything The way dry leaves fall from naked limbs 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, […]
Collectibles
at least he rememberedthe salt-sprayed breezeon their patio in Red Bankthe patio with the pistachio greenumbrella, talking about the sailboatsand sipping raspberry-peach iced teawondering out loud… how a sunsetcould look so much like candle waxmelting on the floor of an old attica few drops of citrus oil was all it took George Cassidy Payne is […]