Victor Road Boys

Robert Vaughan

photo credit: Robert Vaughan

I should live in salt
not bronze, no, not a god
in the house of secrets
just coke bottletops
and corks floating
on salacious breezes
tunneling into hay mounds 

we could barely breathe
laughing so hard while
building our own
shadow houses 

our prickled skin would 
agitate into reddened
disintegrating wounds
one by one the 

boys of Victor Road
leave in search of
deeper pastures, streams 
that can contain the pain

Robert Vaughan teaches workshops in hybrid writing, poetry, fiction at locations like The Clearing, Synergia Ranch, Mabel Dodge Luhan House. He leads roundtables in Milwaukee, WI. He was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction (2013, 2014). His flash fiction, ‘A Box’ was selected for Best Small Fictions 2016 and his flash, “Six Glimpses of the Uncouth” was chosen for Best Small Fictions 2019 (Queen’s Ferry Press).  His work as appeared in Hobart, Ghost Parachute, Big Other, Smokelong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief at Bending Genres, LLC.

Vaughan is the author of five books: Microtones (Cervena Barva Press); Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits (Deadly Chaps); Addicts & Basements (CCM), RIFT, co-authored with Kathy Fish (Unknown Press) and FUNHOUSE (Unknown Press). His blog: www.robert-vaughan.com.