Shawn Pavey has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko’s, and been paid to write everything from résumés to music reviews.  Currently, he earns a living as a Technical Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his fiancée and three worthless but adorable cats.  He is the Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit.  His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications.  He’s hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, seedy motel rooms, and abandoned warehouses.  A graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, Shawn likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue.

--- Taken from author's Website

Books:

• Nobody Steals the Towels From a Motel 6 (Spartan Press, 2015)
• Talking to Shadows (Main Street Rag, 2008)

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God Is On His Way

Just got a text from the Almighty.
He’s running a little behind.
He was on his way to your subdivision
to bless you in your five-room,
three-bath abundance because
you are so much in need of divine grace.

Anyway, the heavenly El Camino picked up
a bolt off the road in the sidewall
of the driver’s side rear Firestone
because of all that highway
construction on Interstate 35
and, wouldn’t you know it, his spare was flat, too.

He called triple A and is just waiting for the tow truck.
Oh, he said to tell you that you’ll be fine
but you should have figured that out by now
with your health insurance and 401k balance.

He also mentioned he can’t stay long. Something about Aleppo.

---Taken from author's website

The World is Too Much With Us

Lament in the Key of 4G

Out here in the Heartland, wind howls
hot across browning grass and concrete and cars.
We lose our voices; lose the sound of words
we use when shouting above the din of our lives.

Nothing provides comfort, so needed here –
this loud life.
                            So much to remember.
We carry expensive dig-
ital phones to track our appointments,
send our truncated messages in dig-
angelic text, take our calls, give us
direction so we are never lost wherever

we are and wherever we
go we never escape; noise follows footsteps and driving
and spending and
                                      working and working and working.

---Taken from author's website

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Shawn's Website

Kansas Poets

Shawn's Facebook Page

Square Up

Rusty Truck

KKFI Community Radio Podcast

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