Vignettes by Robert Vaughan – “Stubborn,” “Corn Maze,” and “Distance”
Vignettes by Robert Vaughan
– published in Apocrypha & Abstractions
Stubborn
Tina is ready to follow us anywhere. I try to tell her it’s a boy’s thing. Doesn’t matter. I tell her Tina, girls don’t climb trees. Don’t play with trucks. Don’t kiss other girls. She’s stubborn. Mom says Tina marches to the beat of a different drum. I’m like, only if that drummer is a majorette.
Corn Maze
I got lost in a corn maze this morning. I know you’re not supposed to panic, but this happened in Soho. I met a lot of other people in there. Many of them were in the arts. One girl told me she’d been in there since Labor Day. I think she said that out of shame. She was wearing white shoes.
Distance
You went but left your voice. It was everywhere at first. Then time does its sad business. Though it hurts less when I forget you, still I am reluctant. Like a parent coming upon a lost child’s toy; it’s hopeless to keep, a heartbreak to discard. One wants to honor love. To forget is callous, to remember destructive. Love should never be unwelcome. But it’s like a haunting, isn’t it? The beloved one returns, and you are afraid.
sam of the 10,000 things 
I love the small but self-contained worlds Robert creates in his flashes and prose poems.
Very effective writing in small spaces. I agree, Berit. Glad you enjoyed the post.
Love these pieces. Robert’s flash pieces have the same kind of power to evoke memory, emotion and the kind of infectious, “get inside your head” quality that 2 minute songs on AM car radio used to have when we used to cruise in my friend’s Mustang along the Lake Michigan shoreline “back in the day.” Love the ending in “Corn Maze.”
Glad you enjoyed this set, Michael. The pieces are intense.