Collected Poems

Second Prize, 2017 San Francisco Book Festival. A scorpion who thinks he's a concert pianist. Packs of chocolate poodles haunting a dystopian beachfront. Mozart and Salieri playing volleyball in Tacoma. For a quarter century, Michael J. Vaughn has been that "weird poet" whose wild scenarios light up the overmannered fields of literary journals. Powered by his other life as a novelist, Vaughn imbues his poems with narratives, characters and (rarest of all) humor, and also the musical passion of an opera critic, singer and drummer. Vaughn's poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals, including The Montserrat Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Confrontation and Terrain.org. His awards include a second prize at the Austin International Poetry Festival, an Editor's Award from Plainsongs, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. He is the author of 19 novels, including The Popcorn Girl and Nature Boy. He lives in San Jose, California.