Craig Payne

He is actually very happy, which goes to explainwhy unexpected tears fill his eyes.His job is good, he’s a teacher. Humanities.The terms stretch out, but pass swiftly by.He is not good-looking-his face is quite bland-but he is very funny, and kind.He falls in love two or three times a day;it . . . . Continue Reading »

Light falls on the door in an oblique plane of cream like something in Vermeer, and comes into this room, to be met by red and blue Fisher-Price disarray. Out in the yard, bare oak branches sway in the warm April breeze. A red jacket lies thrown over a cream chair, where Dr. Seuss sits on loan from . . . . Continue Reading »

We drive nails into the hooves, twist off the horns with worn vise grips, separate mates, pluck the tails, shave the wool, amputate the balls, check carefully every wet cough, hide the pincers inside the leather gloves (the same soft leather used for critics’ shoes), and eye the fluctuations in . . . . Continue Reading »

How good and fine it would have been, to be out upon the wild loon swellsAnd watch the sea-eagles coming in;Or to climb, body lashed by salt sea spray, upThrough the face-lashing spray of pine,To view through a rift the goshawk’s nest, and, hunched over allThose downy forms, that fierce red eye;Or . . . . Continue Reading »