Cave Canem » Blog Archive » Vaughn , Kevin

Kevin Blane Vaughn

Website
Years: 2005, 2007, 2009

Biography

Kevin Vaughn is a doctoral student in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and is a graduate fellow of the Cave Canem Foundation. His work has appeared in Mississippi Review, WheelHouse, Naugutuck River Review and Mythium and has appeared or is forthcoming in the anthologies: 'The Chemistry of Color,' 'The Southern Poetry Antholgy, Volume V: Georgia' and 'KILLER LINES: Poetry about Murder and Mayhem' A former Fulbright Research Fellow to Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, he is currently at work on his dissertation: 'Far Beyond the Stars' and a translation of the sonnets of the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz. Kevin has been the recipient of many residencies including The Millay Colony for the Arts, Montana Artists Refuge, the Performing Artists Forum in Picardie, France.

Poem

Riverside Correctional Facility

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Visit 1

So fresh & fit from Paris

when I appear behind my grandmother

that my mother’s toothless, bald head issues

a silent yelp

& her fist batters

the thick pane of glass between us.

My grandmother & I crowd the booth.

We have shifted in molded plastic chairs for hours

while the CO’s pull my mother from the Hole

for fighting. At whom

did she launch her

ninety pounds, swollen

jet knuckles & malnourished joints?

I flick my fingers

to catch her darting pupils, conduct

conversation, so that in half an hour

we can scaffold the missing

years. My grandmother cannot

understand that my mother is layers

of flint & crystal, that her: Shirley

what the hell is you doin’ here? cripples

my ministrations, while we are both aware

my mother is a manic confidence woman

after forty-something years

& six failed children

there remains parent in her. My heart rings

my siblings between her hopes & this woman

once pretty – a glacial span of dark skin

& bright gap-toothed smile.

Visit 2

When my mother exits

the Hole, we see

how much worse she looks up close.

The CO bellows

through the intercom:

arms & legs uncrossed!

We three allowed

not to touch

& look only forward.

She grins to the quick of my threat

of arranged psychiatric care:

I’m not crazy, I have a disease –

12 step jargon

for when the Higher Power remits you

to free will. It is obnoxious

she believes, I believe this game.

This is our final half hour

& the CO’s

do not pull us apart when I sob

into her bright orange jump suit

& she says: I need my first-born strong.

She bears

no motherly weight – when I have broken

& carried her children & inherited

her disease, needed someone

who knew its dark & would still love me.