To be believed, they say you must be bruised or ruptured, vaporized, turned to particles in the smoke, how poison ivy causes the skin to blister. Have they forgotten so quickly? Before laws and judges, there was Motherhood, lionesses fighting on the open plains. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria […]
primeval
Scene From a Shaker Cemetery
The unmarkedtombstones leavean impression The elemental needto tell someonethat you were hereThe same reason the cave people in Lascaux wrote on wallsThe eternal battle betweensimplicity and pride the primal urge to leave a markon the earth, and the spiritualquest to disappear entirely George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications […]
Animal
You call me animal but I am not your predator. You bear your teeth to mebut I cannot see past your smile. You are nocturnal, like all hunters of fame, yet your eyes are domesticated. Your ears are attuned to the sounds of warm-blooded noises and North America means nothing on your map. You wear your hair with feathers, eagle feathers and heron feathers. Your […]
Humpbacks 2
Before the finneddinosaurs of the icydepths were disappointed bythe steamships of men, they casttheir ballads into the velvet abyss, waiting as mothers do with untamed hearts, big as school buses 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 […]
Messiahs
Between colors and worlds,as old as fish dying on the hot sands,because the gods are jealous and concernedabout us, we are stuck to a diamond-shaped rockof slate, just like any savior who cameby ship and went. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat […]
Yet I Am No Brahmin
The shadow of her eyes, a Volcanic ash, timberwolf grey,on the ribbed and barren seabedof a valley before the pyramids.5,343 feet above the scent of moonshine and charred balsam, clothedin a milky ash, the air is radioactively alive. Like watercress it breaks with a crisp bite – a blade of galactic time,bathed and blended in boiled arrowroot. A lukewarm […]
The Earth Which Preceded Us
From australianmuseum.net.au Insects are on your family tree. Ladybug ancestors and crustacean offspring.A family tree is years of hesitation. From microbes to plants. A chain ofinnumerable mutations. Flatworms andsponges following the design of turtle arms. We are part of a family tree that is more thana metaphor. The birds feed off our limbs. The Cycads and Conifers spread in every direction.Damp, […]