Why Poetry is Well Suited for Space Work

Why did I think she had eyes the
color of feces and sweat dipping 
tainted hairs white as burning 
phosphorous? What is wrong
with me? Why could I not just
see brown and white?  

It’s as if my mind has to reenter the 
atmosphere before it can join other
humans again. Not unlike astronauts,

poets speak words with Neoprene-coated nylon.
Their syllables irrigating the sandy simulacrum surface
of so many sane and stationary lives.

Lives clicked to life, leaking solar radiation,
and cutting cleanly with lawnmowers on a Sunday 
afternoon before the big game, whistling through
the rusting memories of long awakened, brain
washed muscles.

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 the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more. 

See all his poems on Tea House here.

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