George Payne

A Time Before Teachers George Payne

George Cassidy Payne was born in Oneonta, NY, grew up in several towns in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains, and eventually settled in Rochester, NY. He received a BA from St. John Fisher College, MA from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and MTS from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. A Time Before Teachers is his first book of collected poems.


Payne's poetry has appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Cholla Needles, The Adirondack Almanac, Mojave He{art}t Review, MORIA Poetry Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, Front Porch Review, Chronogram Magazine, Talker of the Town, Zingara Poetry Review, Ovi Magazine, River Poets Journal, Adelaide, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Califragile, Deep South Magazine, Amethyst Review, From the Edge Poetry Magazine, and others. His blogs, essays, and letters to the editor, have appeared in national and international publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Toronto Sun, the Havana Times, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone.


In 2010 he was awarded the President's Volunteer Service Award.


A Way Out the cloth of the cosmos
came undone at the seams-undone
like a bootleg Gucci handbag the Pope declared heaven is not real and
Saturn was sucked into the belly of a black hole, as all semblance of order evaporated into
the organic air of an American Spirit cigarette-
the dark green pack with that mild, additive-free taste the glacier ice caps melted,
Capitalism collapsed
as all Hell broke loose today, for the first time, my son climbed out of his crib

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An Age Before Teachers A time before teachers. When
no one taught them how to
fashion wood into tools. They just did, turning a shoulder
into shovels, and intestines into rafts. A time before teachers. When thoughts
and Time leaned towards the magic of God.