Great Showtunes of the American Stage

 

 

 

 

 

the early poems of

Michael J. Vaughn

 

For Calder Lowe

Cadenza

(for JC Watson)

 

Starving tenor sits in his blank page of a room

rolling the head of his pen, staring down a team of Russian novels

he writes a song for himself, sings it into the mirror

watching his breath steam up in pancake ovals

 

In the dark hall near the exit he places solace and solitude

bred together like mutant apples

two bodies, one stem

and inside, the seeds shaped like stars

 

Starving tenor piles scored sheets in the center of his kitchenette and

shoots them sideways into a combine

pulling them out the other end wrapped in baling wire

He stabs it with a pitchfork and poles it high on his shoulder

trodding a metered path to the concert hall

humming me and my shadow

running it high and low for warmth

ready to plow through these soundproof doors and plunder the stage

 

This is my voice, hear it call

hear it rip down clouds from the heavens

but when he enters, he is struck dumb

 

Raven-haired mezzo, center stage

piping stories over the orchestra

singing his song

different notes, farther measures, but his song

captured in the bars of her southbound whisper he has no

choice but to sit and listen

snipping the wires from his baled manuscript and chewing it all down

wondering if he has been writing too low

 

I will shove it all up an octave

I will plant altos and basses beneath her

I will carry candles into my dark hall

until the music cracks my curtains

and pulls sunlight up from the east

 

 

 

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Die Zauberflöte

 

Starving tenor pummels the canyons of a water-dry county

treading south from storm to storm on the

tender black soles of his shoes

racing hard to miss the queen of the night

by ninety six measures

 

Minus the crown, the magic and Papageno

she will sit for him on the lawns of the mission

a poker deck full of faces she calls

Lucia, Carmen, Violetta, Rosina

while the clouds play wuthering heights on the

furrowed brows of Los Padres

Were the San Andreas a state-long cello

she would ring out Verdi from the back of her throat

pluck the base of these mountains

and three hundred miles north his fingers would

shake across the strings

 

 

 

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Marcello's Lament

(For Robert Pesich)

"To the ancient Egyptians, these stars (of Orion's Belt) were the resting place of the soul of Osiris, god of the underworld and a symbol of creativity and the continuity of life…"

            --National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky

Starving tenor finds the stone on a

black sand beach covered in driftwood

(If I said the wood was white as bones

I would be giving it away)

He kneels on the sand

where the ocean comes through the rocks

and reaches into the ribs of a burnt-out cello

plowing a pyramid of blackened chars

until he fingers the edges of its mineral heart

and pulls it into the sun

(If I said it was as red as Betelgeuse

I would be lying)

The stone is a jealous stone

it takes away his lovers

takes away his sleep

leaves his pockets thin and sallow

She is

Musetta, the woman you cannot

have

but if you hold her to your ear

she will sing you bright waltzes

and turn her lollipop eyes at you across the café

But the song and the glance are not enough

so Marcello takes the stone and grinds it up

spreads it across his Sunday salad

(If I said the dressing was Roquefort

I would be saying too much)

The fragments trunkle their way through his veins

and gather at the aorta

pressing northward to make his heart skip

on nights when Artemis neglects her duty

and mountainside lanterns

burst like meteors through the Paris streets

Years after Mimi's last breath

he comes back to the sea to

bare his skin to the inkwell sky

and wait for Orion's Belt to burn him down

leaving a coal as red as Betelgeuse

for the timpani waves to steam away

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Cavaradossi’s Memo

To write a poem now would clearly be a mistake

so I won’t

fermata

a tempo

Now when the Dots of Bott and

windshield wipers

have opened me up

the lobby swirling around me like

so much perpendicular nonsense

so much other people’s stuff

subito piano

And Maria Maddalena stares back at me with blue eyes.

(I will fall in love with her on a balcony

the wind blowing her hair into my face;

I am forced to place it back

against her neck

and hold my hand there

three seconds too long for

inertia)

Morning on Sant’Angelo is deceptively clear

the bells coating Roma in jackets of brass

the stars still in their seats

and these nice military gentlemen

who deliver my notes

for the price of a ring

But they moonlight as a firing squad, you know

and they have their orders

their muskets inscribed with the names of great painters

Raphael, Michelangelo, da Vinci

me

(I am honored but not glad)

I may never finish the opera house

but I offer you this

I know Scarpia is dead and gone, Tosca, but the

sands of Capitola Beach

are no more forgiving than the cobblestones

of Italia

Give me one sure kiss and I will

receive my shots

like long-lost friends

empty myself out to the sky

and listen to your Doppler high C

all the way down from the parapet

First published in Owen Wister Review

(Laramie, Wyoming)

Lament of the Opera Critic

I hereby apologize to all tenors, soprani, baritones, mezzos

for the finely crafted butchery I am about to perform

but pouring gallon after gallon of music into a pint jar

one is bound to spill

Suzuki, Butterfly

what you did just there

that long-stemmed Janus tone

witchcraft limbs spread out over a Nagasaki hilltop

drilled into your lungs and throat

memory of your muscles

countless green-room repetitions

It's gone, I'm sorry

no more than a comma, a police department sketch

Pinkerton

Yankee pig, treble slut

coming in cold from the waterfront

spinning out great reeling ribbons of sound

straight through the wall of orchestra as if

you had been saving breath

all the way across the Pacific

It's gone, I'm sorry

modifying phrase, leaf on a koi pond

Madame set designer

you with the boxtop moon and skateboard walls

sliding around like wolves in a pack

Monsieur conductor

free-barter tradesman of tempo

figuring tariffs between pit and stage and

launching great ships with a stick

And you, ever-neglected oboist

waking the grieving bride from her sleep

I am so, so sorry

but this portal of ink is a rough, dull instrument

a chopstick in the hands of a Texan

trying to scoop up any measure of your depths but

falling always short

See the rainfall of black rice on newsprint

your sweat, your breath

the calluses on your fingertips

the numbers dancing through your head

the imitation heartbeat pacing your limbs

But believe me

for all the dripped-off ice

cream warmed-over last

week's chow mein pared-off gristle

that I parade as journalism

I admire you all the more

am constantly thrilled at the way you

turn yourselves inside-out on the

carousel pegs of a Saturday night

just so you and I and a thousand others may

live someone else's life, die someone else's death

and sing a song of centuries

First published in Comrades.

Menuetto

Plaid sweaters on coathooks

rubber boots along the hall

in from the weather the boys and the girls

march to a two-step

blue-letter bows perched on their shoulders like

parakeets

Take my hand, Mary Ann

take from the millennia of my fingertips

the secret paragraphs within my palm

it is for this we ferris wheel over the boardwalk sky

for this we line up on walls east and west

working up the hormones to say

Excuse me, I

Let these amplified strangers

shake us around on the ends of their timepieces

let the sea water bead up on our foreheads until

the future becomes a paper we must sign in

blue ink and vinegar

The way your left hip swirls beneath my sonar

is a letter I will not open until the

stamp is old and faded

but give me a kiss and I will try to understand

why clockwise is the direction of choice

and how the spin of a mirrored ball can

turn a cafeteria into a milky way

First published in Orange Coast Review

(Costa Mesa, California)

Mustang Sally

Call her a red haired Jewish soul eyed brick wall Los Angeles blues belter wide stance evil eye coffee espresso stare melt you into the sidewalk.

You needn’t say more unless you feel like it.

Big Irish lug nut sits on the ride cymbal, too lost in his two four fills to hear the singer, nothing more than a shoulder blade on his middle tom.

Still, two days later he draws the picture in full fashion: shafts of sun piping the next door brickpile; longneck Buds, a shower of smoke, guitar case coffins; stage stack of Clapton drivers, one China rip and roll sax.

           

Mustang Sally holds up a strong pale hand, cantering the tempo. The band stays rutstuck lagging, but not me, me and my high hat frills. I follow her fingers all the way down with the cue of my sticks: twelve bars, twelve bars and home.

First published in Eureka Literary Magazine

(Eureka, Illinois)

Quarter to three, no one in the place

I gotta wonder just how many of us guys

have had this notion before

bruised, battered

driving home late at night

watching a moon sprout from the clouds

inches away from full like

a freshly poured martini

I sing in the

wee small hours of the morning

to the streetlights, to the stoplights

and I try to make it as soft as I can

softer than smoke

because sometimes you sing better when you’re quiet

and sometimes it’s better to make people

lean forward and listen

I consider the idea that

after hundreds of dashboard recitals

I no longer sing it just like you

and the gift is complete

So many songs

and what I cannot know

pulling into the driveway

loading my drums into the living room

is that, beginning a half hour from now

I will hear them all again

as our national ears and eyes

give your life the final once-over

Looking back, I am happy that

my tribute arrived early

without the burden of knowledge

just a lonely man down a dark street

something to pass the time

and so quiet at the end

so quiet

and then the strings

and then it’s just

gone

First printed in The Montserrat Review

(San Jose, California)

Memorial Day

On the day you blew out your last birthday candles

I sat midway up a row of seats

dazzled by a cowgirl fiddler wearing the kind of

gypsy sparkle dress you would

take to work on Halloween

It isn’t supposed to be like this

there isn’t supposed to be a world where I can see

a cowgirl fiddler

or a step-drop accordionist

or some high-hatted peg of a bass player, and not

bring them back to you

wrapped in the ribbons of my words

The cowboy sang a song in Spanish

you should have heard it

rising into his smile

bringing water from the skies

Driving home I tried to remember that rain

does not always mean sadness

but could not raise my voice, thinking of

you, trilling over Sunday morning pancakes

great showtunes of the American stage

First published in North Atlantic Monthly

(Stony Brook, New York)

The Train to Unattainia

I inhabit the spaces between the walls

after the flip of the switch but before

the dark of the bulb

I am a ruthless cowboy semicolon

forever inserting myself into conversations

funny how it always seems to cause

a pause

riding the hum of the intermission crowd like a

sailor, tying silk scarves around

each of their slow-nodding heads and

running

the rise of the curtain my only ticket in.

The only breath I take (breathe)

comes on the twentieth mile (breathe)

of a thousand-mile drive

when I know that turning around is no longer an option

the early morning sun blowing through the vents like

powdered sugar

I go to the land where nothing can be had

running down a long hard ribbon of willful disconnnection

a lack of direction so palpable you could

cut it with a compass

The needle winds its way in and out of the continental fabric

pulling me along to places like Cheyenne, Wyoming

where my siren, Improvisia

stands upright on the green edge of a sidewalk

blowing smoke into a renegade sun

In one hand she holds a book of songs

in the other a bucket of blue paint

dips the one in the other till the

color bleeds out the notes

She hands it to me with an Andalusian smile and says

Here, it’s the one you asked for

open it up and

sing, baby, sing

First printed in Austin International Poetry Festival Anthology

(Second Prize)

Amaryllis Asphalt

Jacaranda snows are a lovely thing if you can find them, splitting the narrow sea of Highway 5, wondering if your hand will slip from the wheel, if life holds more for you than three-minute eggs and a waitress named Jolene.

The Texas rain does you large favors, curtaining off the horizon before it swallows you up. Western states do not stop for passengers, and morning waits like a dial tone on the rail fences outside Dallas.

The only thing better than being here is being three miles from here, three minutes from now.

And nothing so good as a rest stop blackbird, picking crumbs off the pay phone shelf.

First published in The Montserrat Review

(San Jose, California)

Redding   50 Miles

A wild dark breath

courses the night air

and Karen sits by the window

waiting to catch it

Its rise and fall comes in the form of a

freeway, two in the morning

flat shadow farmlands scored by the

dirt road call of Christmas tree lights

Driving by fast she looks to the right

squeezes the shutter

strangers’ lives, hubbub motions in the

charcoal splash of TV light

One frame one glance and she,

shooting star of brake lights

steals three of their seconds

chewing them down

running north toward Chico

(Twenty miles west an old man sits on

tinder brown hills

flipping matches like startled flaming crickets

into the tall grass)

If you could flux from point to infinite

point along the interstate highway system

you might cease to exist

So sweet to find Mt. Shasta at your

starboard window like a

bright-eyed salesman

so easy to watch him go

A silver loop of keys

perches on the nightstand

and Karen sits on the bed

waiting to take them

She slips down the walk

a set of eyes from the bedroom window

one frame one glance one

subtraction

Karen reaches behind the shrubs

feels for the cord and

unplugs the Christmas tree lights

The darkness is so lovely.

First printed in The Montserrat Review

(San Jose, California)

Gooroo (Chekhov)

On the night of my freedom

a Cherokee barnowl spins by to

snatch my breath

a single helium balloon wanders the parking lot

like a security guard

and the soccer field is framed by airline seats

The history of drama is such that

no sane person would dare attempt it

(“In her eyes, she is quiet like a fish”)

Better to climb mountains on Lake Michigan

ski slaloms across Death Valley

eat ice cream with no apology

than try to wrap up the human bloodflow

like a fifty-cent candy bar

(“You have created an elaborate romance for yourself”)

Hie thee to a bookstore

where they are rolling in Hemingway on a hand truck

But tonight I will toss my every essential

into a hatchback

and just leave

Because leaving is the only response.

First published in Terrain

(Tucson, Arizona)

Mississippi Telephoto

What the northern lights

are really looking for

is a good Cajun band

but lacking the will to reach the delta

they settle for a slow Acadian waltz

wavering over the tundra

whispering to the ears of Minnesota

don’t give up, spring will come.

First published in Oregon East

(La Grande, Oregon)

And Roy Rogers Sang the Torah

North we go a-roaming from Wyoming to Montana

All upon a tankful of George Custer’s diesel gas

Jesus Christ is savior on the local reservation

But still we eat our snow peas on the Powder River Pass

Eastward in the gloaming from Wyoming to Mount Rushmore

Searching for the faces in the South Dakota night

Ripping down through Deadwood in the name of Rapid City

To see Abe Lincoln glowing in the cold arena light

The Seder means a shuffle low from Buffalo to Casper

Cruising for a synagogue and good unleavened bread

Jesus ain’t no savor in our private schoolhouse kitchen

And Jewish New York cowboys need a place to lay their heads

Gave us such a chilling there in Billings, South Montana

Fictive flames of Zion just beneath the bookstore glass

Driving back down ninety just as fast as wheels would take us

To watch them burning ridges in the deep Wyoming grass.

First published in The Redneck Review of Literature

(Pocatello, Idaho)

Swerve

The wildlife of the Northern Plains

are committing suicide in front of our cars

East Wyoming

Big white-tail buck

a triple-knock tango down the length of the pickup

two blind kicks in the spell of my high beams

Black Hills

Tiny V-wing sparrow

suctioned under the chassis, drop-kicked out the back

arcing the white stripe in a tennis ball of feathers

South Dakota

Silver dollar frogs

flipping like leaves on the black rain asphalt

death  in a whisper on the steady whine of wind

We stop for gas in Sioux Falls

still-eyed, faint

charting the guacamole constellations on our fenders

shaking our heads

drinking our coffee, driving on

A day later in La Crosse

vegetarian pizza, and root beers

we look at each other and

burst out laughing

First printed in Plainsongs

(Hastings, Nebraska)

Requisite Breakup Poem #3

We travel this highway

as far as our maps will take us

sharing the lead

using each other to block the wind

At night we rest by the orchards

I hike between the rows to pull up mustard

for your windshield

your shadow just above me

in the shape of an owl.

One day we come to a T

you roll down your window and say

I want to go this way

the road is straight and clear

the soil is rich and moist and falls apart in your fingers

there are perfect cows and old trees and graveyards

and there is a town where children play on tire swings

where the motels have ice blue pools and queen size beds

and there is a car wash named the Pearly Gates

I know the owner; I know his son.

And I say

I want to go this way

the road is dusty and hard to follow

there are lightning storms and flash floods

but there are canyons the colors of children’s drawings

and at night the sky is wider than time

On top of a mesa there is a coyote sipping cappuccinos

and we will sit and drink and howl

while dead nameless poets play baseball

on the desert floor

hitting the ball hard, reciting villanelles as they run

to first boulder.

And we look at each other

You wave and turn right

your hatchback slipping away in the flash of morning

a period at the end of a clean gray sentence

I wrap you in tobacco

watch the smoke roll of my windshield

check my gas gauge and

turn left.

First printed in Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology

Haunt

It’s a common story, me

circling the Union at Stanford, flipping through a paper

sighs pouring from the buildings like black coffee then

Echoing archways near the fountain

meaningless to anybody else but

there you are

Rollerblading by in your little black dress as I

pop you into my camera for Christmas

Ghosts are meant to be cursed

but I have learned to hold my tongue –

you have this habit of bestowing your features on

leading ladies, jewelry shop clerks

high school girls on beaches

I’m sure they’ve spotted my mystified gaze

tossed over my shoulder like a blue scarf at their

shifting triangle smiles, apple-cider eyes

white chocolate dimples, high-wire curls

Come back when you like, shade of my heart

haunt me, shake me, draw me out

no need to call ahead

because these days

when the words pour out of me like silvered breath

I couldn’t bear any less

I look up from the page to find you

framed by the window in a halo of fireflies

a Russian princess in a dark coat

and then, you come in

and sit at my table

First published in Mystic River Review

The Aging Bachelor Drowns in Memory

Charlie Madsen is deep into hiding, scratching out pages of English to his father, when the pageboy redhead rushes into the café, arms swinging in the backwoods slope of his vision.

Speaking to the room, she confesses that she is late because she lost her way, then goes to sit with her friends at the next table. The tractor beams of recognition stop her halfway there, pulling her gaze on a string to the right.

Charlie, in fact, would prefer that she were not there, has no ready vocabulary for the slick steel chains of attraction buckling his skin, but as she rushes over is overcome by the ice blue cut of her eyes, the severe line of hair shadowing her forehead, Renaissance cheekbones, and blazing youth.

Please, Rodrigo

drive me to my friend’s house

I will show you wide rivers of asphalt

tick-tock fields of suburban streetlights

and one tiny honeycomb cell near

the orchard where I spent

warm, liquid French toast hours

on a couch, with a girl

introducing her to the farther reaches of her body

thin shoulders, blonde hair the scent of

nutmeg, the skin at the back of her neck

(I whispered the word “condom.” She ran.)

And if it weren’t this street

it would be the avenue to the south

the boulevard to the east

and several bipartisan culs-de-sac

my former girlfriends peppered over the landscape like

shotgun roadsigns

Charlie succeeds in blocking out the UV rays from the redhead’s table and finishes his letter, is about to head to the counter for a refill when one of three dozen our-songs sweeps down from the speakers.

The fair-skinned Christian girl with

rotello curls of chocolate hair

a Christmas day two years before when they

danced to drunken country breakup songs

on a moss-green futon

her smooth Egyptian smile snaking its way up his neck

He is surrounded, buried

covered and done

had best just order a poppyseed bagel

stare out the window at taillights and oak trees and

settle in for the long night of forgetting.

First published in Comrades

Alcyone

What you are doing here is a

matter for minds

greater than this

All I can know is the

curve of your spine as I

cradle it in my hands and

refugee mockingbirds

calling out the hours from

across the street.

Our lips have been moving for

hours now but

finally are good for something

And when I slip my

fingers in yours and

pull you my way the

moon breaks open and

spits out stars like

raindrops from a shaken umbrella.

First published in Zuzu’s Petals Quarterly

P.O.V.

Jersey said to the popcorn girl

add two letters to your name and I will

make you a streetcorner

The popcorn girl swooned

Jersey woke to the sound of

pigeons

pecking on the shower stall door.

First published in Epicenter

(Riverside, California)

We’re none of us very good at saying no

Just beneath the sandry mocean

the mitochondria play their sweet fiddles

for the seabass

who cannot keep a secret

in their filthy little hearts

There is no trust out there

just barren narratives passing from ship

to ship on the sodium tongues of pirates

scurvy dogs who couldn’t make it in real estate

or car bombings

I am a missive for the great unimportant things so

meet me on the swings before midnight

Close your eyes, lay your sweet

shoulders into my palms and

wait as I take careful aim and

launch you into the fishnets of Scorpius

I will

miss you but

will enjoy

seeing your

smile there

just above

Sagittarius

comet white

half

surprised

and

blinding.

Forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving

(Boulder, Colorado)

Pressing Your

Tired of the hallelujah congress

incorporated mathematical white presidents

diet sodas on the big privy screen

Annie shames herself on the hot brass button

rolls out between sandstone griffins

wraps a leash around her last real thought

and lets go down the

hurly burly knobs of San Francisco.

Somewhere north of Market

three feet past the turnstile

Annie meets the straight flush she’s been

expecting ever since

that night in Biloxi

when the tides didn’t come.

She gets home on the transit

seven minutes past midnight

one finger on the rip cord

finds the jack and queen of diamonds

fornicating across the pale shoulder of her

best cotton blouse.

The king was looking the other way

but then, he had no choice.

First published in Zuzu’s Petals Quarterly

Globe Street

Build me a home in the shape of a question mark. Free up the shutters for long-seeing eyes. Salve me a redwood straight down the eaves, and plant a checkerboard on the front porch.

Burnish the banister to a fine chameleon hue. Wallpaper a bedroom where I can sit straight with someone I love, flip wide the curtains and watch the traffic slipping apart the sneaklight of dawn.

Don’t tell me the neighbors are wax statuettes; I won’t believe you. But pipe in the music of the stratosphere and leave me to lie in the hot tub, soaking up molten rocks while crazed children take steak knives to the heads of my tulips.

Bill me quickly; my time is almost up. There is always one car on the cul-de-sac with out-of-state plates.

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Tinymind

Yer a mad scootermonger, said Harold to the

change clerk, whereupon the change clerk said

I don’t have to take that from no one and I

probably will, too

You haven’t thought that the sun couldn’t

rise without us

that little Bobby Hermedon couldn’t tie his

shoelaces, nor eat a wholesome breakfast

without one of us paper pushers

pushes us

paper

If yore life is so damned little or so

damned big

whyntcha prove it and see how many

perfectly

executed

checkmarks you can place within the frame of my

time clock fricassee

Go ahead and live yore unmarked path

yore reckless tango hall

yore foolhardy bean dip café

but dontcha come a-runchin to me when yore

number five paper clips run out on

April

third

around two o’clock

Oh and they will, too

First published in Onionhead.

(Lakeland, Florida)
Postulant

Mariette, dressed in white

slings a castanet across her fingers and

joins the circle

twenty sisters pounding out the

unlikely double handclap of flamenco

a snake in their hands.

Not enough; nothing ever is. The

smoke never so sweet as yuletide fires, the

grass never so spring tart as

schoolday cartwheels, the

kiss never so lost as a

lightning bug’s capture

insect halo in the cage of your fingers.

Pleasures die down from the first

angelfood crayons snap in two

Kodachrome slides fade from too many

trips around the light bulb

And it’s come to God

brass circle token

the underground train to heaven.

Mariette, dressed in white

runs to the garden

strips off her habit

kneels eye level with a bed full of daisies

black faces turned to bottlecaps

Cupping milk white breasts in the

offering plates of her hands

thinking, no one

no one but these and

First published in Ilya’s Honey

Henry Miller’s Marshmallow Stick

In the full-moon stir of Big South

bright enough for front-porch kisses

we dip our bread in primordial soup and

chew off the crust, spitting out mountains

The old man’s up there somewhere

screaming out the Ventanas

as Michelangelo beats at his bald-pated hills

The white marble comes back as sea foam

or marshmallows

The guy with the flashlight forehead says

come down, old man

grab a stick, join the spree

burn them a bubbling black if you like

In the morning the old man is back to his mountains

while sun and moon play tennis on the grass-line spread

God love us if we don’t take it home and

play it on our tee-vees

when the pace gets too pacey

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Instructions for Finding Frosted Glass at the Beach

The glass is commonly found in the middle rocks

at the edge of the high-tide wash

an hour before sunset in fall

when the waves are beginning to churn

Walk easy, look hard, but

not so hard that you can’t hear the ocean

The best are found alone

on plains of wet sand teased by the breakers

Keep your gaze to the sun and

watch for them flashing

guitar-pick chinks of white, green, brown

the rare and lovely blue

stitching your pockets, scraping as you walk

Take five minutes to watch the sun fall away

this will cost you the green and the brown

which turn in the gloaming to coal-dark lumps

but the clear is still a possibility

even, occasionally, in moonlight

so long as you ignore the

triangular fragments of mussel-shell

Remember that your quarry lies in a middle ground

that these fallen stars come not from

beauty but from someone

throwing litter on a beach

Do not feel the need to restock

this will be done for you

First published in Parting Gifts

(Greensboro, North Carolina)

Apologia

Perhaps I had forgotten to tell you

why I do this

out here on the steel railings of a coffeehouse

chairs stacked up on tables

brushing down the deadbolt click of a

chapter’s final word

the easy snap of a dictionary.

I need this

I need this more than

solid blue numbers in a checkbook

a young girl’s smile

a cereal with fiber in it

Grant me one small brake on the

steady slip of time

a night-fed gap where teenagers

kick coffee cups around the parking lot

where tomorrow’s mist hangs high

just across the road, patient as a hawk

and your thoughts settle down so heavy and warm

that your eyes cannot quite focus.

And so, if I had forgotten to tell you

that place, tonight

I was there

and my head still rings with sound.

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

(Tonawanda, New York)

Batbeat

There is a whack and a thuck about this place

circular percussion, metal on leather

leather on leather

claws on baked white soil

scratch yourself a symphony and beware the bad hop

The men in fashion glasses don’t understand

the game is cloth on dirt

no Fred Astairing into third but a

decrescendo sled across the gravel

one hand cupping the perfect white corner

There is nothing more oddly beautiful than the smile

of an umpire

no point more tenderly treacherous

than the turn in a double play

hack yourself a concerto and beware the mute outfielder.

First published in Yarrow

Reconnaissance

Jessica Packhorse skips down the sidewalk, scoring out squares of cool gray cement in odds and evens, whipping their flanks with the red wooden handles of her jumprope.

Mama, if you live in these cracks, I will love you, even to the jadewater green of your weeds, the pocket-lint fuzz of your candy corners. I am the call of the desperate, the clothing of the clouds looking for a great wind to carry me home. When the sun splits the cap of the mountains, I will sleep and try not to wake, perhaps just to ask for the time, a drink of water, a word of comfort. And when I lie back down, the  pillow will hide half my smile.

Jessica pulls out a square of white chalk, scratching the exes and ohs in her path, hiding a world of secrets in the press of her teeth.

First published in Alphabet Faucet

(Bellingham, Washington)

Reel to Reel

I was standing in line

for tape decks

two for one

and these tape decks didn’t record sound but

loss, and

grief, and

the answers you remembered right after the

algebra quiz but it

didn’t matter

they took the points off anyway.

The old man in front of me

in the line, his name was Alex

he was afraid he wouldn’t know how to use it

the tape deck

because he hardly knew how to

program the VCR

boot up the computer

open the garage door

say he was sorry.

His wife was Betty

and he needed the tape deck for

the unfortunate sentence

the missed embrace

the long hours of silence behind the paper

in front of the evening news

while she waited by the fire, knitting

quiet, patient.

When the lady asked him, he said

I need lots of tape

five dozen

two hours each.

She didn’t tell me she was leaving.

First published in Eureka Literary Magazine

(Eureka, Illinois)

Genevieve

In the kitchen, Grandma was a turbine

smooth and powerful

quietly churning out beds of

baked beans

under a jacket of brown sugar and bacon

vats of potato salad that

appeared out of nowhere

roast turkey that fell to pieces in your mouth and

bright orange slices of vegetable candy –

the only cooked carrots that I could ever enjoy

It would never come from her lips but

someone

told me, as a young wife

she cooked for entire logging camps in Alaska

which explains the leftovers.

She was considered unusually cool

for a grandmother

because she drove a red Mustang

was a single mom with a kid my age

and blessed with seven granddaughters could

shop with the best of them

When they asked me where I got the

polyurethane New Wave pseudo-military

wedge lapel jacket with the

wicked Dance Machine Michael Jackson angles

I would smile

slide the moss green zipper half way up and

relish my answer

“She was born in Alaska, you know.

And she invented divorce.”

One Christmastime we passed around

a frayed black and white photo

some time in the ‘30s

a young whip-smart June, already burdened

seated on a chair with her husband on her lap

a dark-haired bush pilot looking

wild, out of balance

staring at the camera with my uncle’s eyes

one foot already out the door

But even with all this knowledge

I may never have known her

may never have delved very far beneath the

layers of Seward toughness

and Indiana stoic

It took nothing less than

my mother’s death

to finally bring it out of her

seated beside me at the kitchen table

the evening after the funeral

her admission a string of

chopped-up words

through a gush of unwelcome tears

“Mike. This should never happen.

A mother should never have to

see her children die.”

In our lives, Grandma was a white blood cell

equipped with enzymes that could sense the damage and

rush her there to heal the wound

to fill the gap

to sit the kids

Now she has become the wound itself

and we part from this Indiana graveside

on diminished limbs

and skyward breath.

First published in The Montserrat Review

(San Jose, California)

Michael J. Vaughn’s poetry has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals around the world. He is the author of thirteen novels, including The Popcorn Girl and Frosted Glass. Vaughn is a regular contributor to Writer’s Digest, a thirty-year opera critic, and drummer for the San Francisco rock band Exit Wonderland. Vaughn’s more recent poetry may be found in his collection Fields of Satchmo, available on Amazon Kindle.