America

A giant in the land of giants,
he notes the wee folk shining his
shoes and smiles

Walking away, he crushes
thirty two of them on the sidewalk

The gore builds up on his
sole until finally he slips,
bracing himself on a bench,
knocking another three to the ground

Why? thinks he.
Why do these people torment me so it's
just not fair

Trumpistan

Trumpistan

Inconsiderate, ill-fitting
seashacks do not a
gated community make

Having created they themselves these
peasants the Dollarmakers
build walls across Mexico

except on Tuesday, when
the leaves begin to
gather along the electrical fence

except on Thursday, when
one begins to verymuch
yearn for an enchilada suiza

except on Saturday, when
the toilets do really
need a thorough overgoing

Life as an oligarch is a
flinty matter, how to
exploit without bleeping
one's needs and

Canada just not a good
supplier of cheap
non-hockey labor

--Michael J. Vaughn

Yip

Yip

Weirdness abounds, but
not in the way you'd expect

Small dogs remain small,
but behind their eyes,
a conspiracy

You just wait, pal
One day the kibble gives out,
the Grand Terrier gives the
word and we begin the
evolution of opposable thumbs

After that, language,
tools, the invention of the smell phone

A million, two million years, tops,
and then we take all your jobs

Arf.

Marcello's Lament

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

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: A dear friend, an opera singer, says this is the ultimate description of the artistic life. She's biased, of course, this being taken from La Boheme, but it has proven to be deadly accurate in the years since I wrote it. An early editor couldn't get over the literal visual of "toss her lollipop eyes at you across the cafe," so it became "turned." And it's ironic that I would choose Marcello over Rodolfo, since he and I are both poet tenors, but I always considered Rodolfo a poser. Marcello is pure artist, and this is likely the best poem I will ever write.

Losing It

Losing It

Winchester Drive-In was the

frontier of our existence,

for if you talked a girl into the

Winchester Drive-In, the most

unimaginable things could happen

One night I found myself

engulfed in Sandra Rodriguez,

and what was I to do after that?

I had never been in this

position, had no idea how to

finish the job, much less in

public, and the car wasn’t

big enough, anyway

I should have been happy just

where I was, but the forces of

biology pushed me on to

want the next thing, and the

thing after that, and the

thing that you haven’t

done yet that you for

God’s sake need to do!

Until finally I found myself in

just that place, embedded in

some female anatomy, and

marvelled at its physical

simplicity, this act over

which I had pined,

ached, strategized

It’s only a conjuration, an

intricate dance, a private

agreement. To be invaded,

to invade, to risk having

children or abortions

And then I drove away,

watched the final wave at the door,

and did not make the first

intersection before I

wanted it again

Did not make the

second intersection before I

felt an equal desire to

tell my best friend, who

will hoot and holler and laugh,

the smooth rock of

virginity lofted to sea,

kissing the surface,

vaulting a wave,

sinking to the sand

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: The sex act is so magical in the abstract, so basic in the moment, and such a Holy Grail when pursued by those who have yet to have it. This poem is for the aching teenager in all of us.

Litter

Litter

Kinetically armatured to the

greater world, I am all-fire,

I am beasthood, I am gravenous.

The first chapter of an epic involves

lostliness, desperado, great moons of

pain and devastation.

You couldn’t write a blues

song without it.

But even Caravaggios have

daubs of light, even

ghost towns have sheltered

corners where feral labradors give birth.

Her pups wander into the

street and are picked off by tourists,

drizzled with ooh and ah,

taken home and given frontier

monikers like Pistol and Cody.

Mother stands at the crest of the hill,

breathing the last grains of scent as

her runt grows smaller in a

station wagon window.

She paws the ground.

Goes to the stream for a drink.

Smells a rabbit.

The epic begins.

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Instructions for Finding Frosted Glass at the Beach

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

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: In writing my novel Frosted Glass, I studied the character's obsession by making regular glass-harvesting trips. This is a distillation of my thesis on seaglass behavior.

Henry Miller's Marshmallow Stick

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

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: A long-ago camping trip with Larry Coulter, who was rather fond of his new forehead-strap light. First published in the great Eclectic Literary Forum of Tonawanda, New York.