Robert Vaughan lives in Milwaukee where he leads two writing roundtables at Redbird- Redoak Writing.
His prose and poetry is found among numerous literary journals such as Elimae, Metazen, Necessary Fiction and BlazeVOX. His short stories are anthologized in Nouns of Assemblage from Housefire, and Stripped from P.S. Books. He is a fiction editor at JMWW magazine, and Thunderclap! Press. He co-hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect.
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An Occupy Trifecta
Save Me
We are held down by sadness, lifted by deep longing to live, in the midst of some barely understood struggle, tired, revived, heroes, souls in need of saving, ordinary.
We have the power of the ordinary on our side.
I have reached the flaming gate that holds back the other half of
existence. We all do.
My hands burn trying to open it.
I will open it.
The rain is a thousand nightclubs
It's a person I don't comprehend.
It's a circus in the night, an uprising of outcasts.
It is purple applause for a scarlet acrobat.
Destination, there is none. No one is anyone in the rain.
The puddles are full of names floating, lost.
Who are you, this person trapeezing out of the sleep?
A streak of light falls across your eyes.
You have just been born.
Planetary Pull
All the planets tug and pull at you.
They seek to sway you to their course.
Your nature is like torn waves in a discordant sea.
You're an orator trying to quell an angry crowd.
Should reason be king?
Take my hand before the wind blows you from the rough rampart.
In a time of revolution, love is the only way forward.
The World Wakes Up
So we stop at the side of the road, and there is the largest tree and a long kiss with the hazard lights flashing.
Everything is the beginning of something. A sycamore seed, a windshield fogging up.
The first fist of rain pounding down.
Come closer. Let’s get our arms around each other and count all the bones we can. Between
us, we have rungs for a ladder leading into the leaves and fingers left over for climbing. Two tongues perch there and sing while the world wakes up.
What will we miss of our skin and gristle? Our disengaged hearts.
When you’re finally no one, what else do you do but call out your name?