After the Pause Volume 3, Issue 1 Spring 2016
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About After the Pause is an online literary journal based in St. Paul, MN, featuring poetry, flash fiction, and artwork, published quarterly. We also publish a yearly print anthology, with all proceeds going to charity. We look to feature the best poetry and flash fiction from new, emerging, and veteran writers. Find us here: afterthepause.com or @afterthepause
Purpose We believe art is a product of life experiences, from the joyful to the heartbreaking to the absolutely mundane. Life throws pauses at us. Art follows the pause. We want to share the best art we can find and bring hope through those artworks.
Founding Editor Michael Prihoda
Special Thanks To all our wonderful contributors. You grew this issue from a seed.
Cover Art Sarah KayĂ&#x;
Copyright 2016 All rights of the material within belong to the authors.
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…In This Issue… Poetry Khaloud Al-Muttalibi Rag Doll Jeff Burt Mutilation Into the Standing Grain Teaching Punctuation to a Remedial English Class Laurin DeChae No One Tells You Benjamin DeVos A Black Hole Emerged Where a Massive Star Collapsed Chris Crew When We Watched Veronica Mars I Missed Matt Dennison Connecticut Pond Search Instructions to the Dog Kelly DuMar Eyewitness, Bataclan David Eves To Kiss You as Warriors Melanie Faith In the movie of his life, the antagonist brushes his teeth in the guest bathroom Molly Kennedy Dinner With My Parents Laurie McCulloch Before the Mirror Jon Riccio The Follow-Up Jason Sears 97…98…99… AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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Shloka Shankar Responsibility is a Dirty Word Cathryn Shea The Double Life John Stanizzi The Verge Kami Westhoff Overcast Alyssa Yankwitt Love Wants
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Fiction L.L. Madrid Timeline of Love and Life Samantha Madway Contrapositive Thomas Mundt Magenta Jason Namey Shoot You For It Joseph Parker Okay the disappointing exception to everyone’s expectations Iona Pelovska Tempest in a Teacup C.C. Russell Triplicate
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Art Favielle 5 Pieces Elizabeth Erhartic Her Specialty The War Against Time Sarah Kayß Museum of Modern Art, Liverpool, UK The Memorial for Fallen German Soldiers Post-1945, Berlin, Germany Bermuda Dreieck, Bochum, Germany Michael Mechan-Doyle Visual Poem Iona Pelovska 2 Visual Poems W. Jack Savage Winterland Starting Again We’ll Make Camp Down There Cattle Call on the Warner’s Lot Her Every Instinct Said No Shloka Shankar Erasure 2 Erasure 4 Louis Staeble At Turns Serpentine Chromagnify Cold Tranquility Defiant Light Destiny for the Disturbed Dreamer David J. Thompson Across to Illinois Latch Outside Low Point
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Editor’s Note What is it this time? Spring, 2016, in the thick of a new presidential race. Scientists have newly discovered gravitational waves from when two black holes kissed each other in the abscess of space. Perhaps a clue to the beginnings of the universe. And here we are, spinning away, per usual. With all of the choices at our disposal, what will it be? Growth. Though what do we water?
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Chris Crew
When We Watched Veronica Mars I Missed
the actual moonrise over the cascades watching paper snow on carolers and the ice-pick-palming waitress. Sick of the unknowable, you are just the girl to ask. After your final case, Dad fired for demagnetizing the hard drive, your sex tape’s cinematographer bludgeoned with the tatters of his reputation, Ben lingered over the remote. He can’t love a job or woman: when I go to bed, he will raid a virtual city, guild clamoring for his help. When his roommate drowned mid-day in the pool, Ben out buying beer, buns, grillables, there was no cover-up. No paternity cliff-hanger, no roofies, no one to level with. Remember last night? You dropped from prom dress into unlit ocean, your collar bones bright above the moon’s drag. We did not miss what that meant to you. So what to do with your cancellation? Needing millions more than two jobless soft couches and panoramic windows? Needing you, too, to be our sharp tongue, our real physical danger, our life worth watching again.
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Cathryn Shea
The Double Life
I was just saying to my girlfriend, My
it’s hot in here & I’m sweaty, yes
hubby has always been faithful
checking his porn sites & chat
What a guy, you know
he doesn’t think that I care or know
the percentage these days
of w4m, free or for bucks
of sneaky, cheating spouses
& so-called platonic pals posing
He loves me like crazy
next to his motorcycle
It’s almost embarrassing how much
I’ve been oblivious, how much
he thinks of me
I don’t know
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Dan Rowell
“O.K….,” She Said Sorry about the awkwardness of this morning’s meeting. The sky’s hue didn’t suit my color scheme and the grocery store was out of fresh interludes. Perhaps next time salmon won’t swim up my throat with,” How are you?” Besides, standing on the yellow line, even in a carnival, is bad energy.
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Dan Rowell
Maybe Van Helsing Will Want It
The vampire killing kit seemed like such a good idea at the time. I mean the place must be over run. I wake in a pallor, paralyzed no matter how much garlic I lump under the pillow. It had aesthetics too. A walnut box of pearl and silver implements, except the carved holly stakes with cross inlays, of course. But I guess it wasn’t what we needed to bring summer rain and jazz, a burst of grapes on tongue to revive us. Maybe the solution was the mirrors we didn’t see him in threatening our throats, the mornings we woke up and shot the pistol’s silver ball into the sky as an invitation.
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Benjamin DeVos
A Black Hole Emerged Where a Massive Star Collapsed
One day I decided with my imaginary friend to jump out of a plane at thirteen thousand feet. We fell five thousand before I realized that our feet were still on the ground, and that there never was any altitude, then saw that my imaginary friend was actually a library, and from there I entered him to investigate how to naturally raise my adrenaline levels. I discovered that cold air and deep breathing could make me feel more alive than any bungee jump, all I had to do was take in more breath than I released. Most people had a desire to launch downward into a space where they could grow like fungus in the dark. I had other aspirations, but I took the time to read science as a parable. Science wasn’t science until just recently. It was magic only a day ago, in the sorcerer’s cauldron, stirring like a dragon in a dungeon. It was there before I knew what it was. I was gliding to class one morning on a pair of purple roller blades when a gamma ray burst from the sky and exploded me with science.
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Alyssa Yankwitt
Love Wants
* the light wants to shine through el amor vence al odio * we let in only as much as we can take * the moment your hand first grazed mine just after a hard rain * nothing translates perfectly nothing translates faithfully * the diagonals of my body are uneven this much I know
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L.L. Madrid
Timeline of Love and Life
Age 5: It occurs to Imogene that her parents love Beau more. She prefers the cat, Freckles. Age 10: Lila moves in next door. She smells like Ivory Soap. The aroma of magic. Craving. Age 15: Imogene longs to kiss those soap fresh lips. She tries. Fails. Lila pulls away. Repulsed. Age 25: Colleen carries the scent. Smiles easily. So this is love. Only Beau attends the ceremony. Age 35: Morning coffee and evening kisses. A house brimming with cats. Steady careers and exotic vacations. Age 45: Secret yearnings. Silent fights. A rough path to new understanding. Too late for some adventures. Age 55: Ambitions fade. Some dreams are achieved while others are abandoned. A shared hope lives on. Age 65: Cancer claws at Colleen. There are whispers and hard smiles. The memorial is well attended. Age 75: The last of Imogene’s cats, Pumpkin, curls and doesn’t wake. The house feels truly empty. Age 85: After many long years, the memories of love linger still. Ivory Soap, forever the same.
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Favielle
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Favielle
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Favielle
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Favielle
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Favielle
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David J. Thompson
Across to Illinois
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David J. Thompson
Latch
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David J. Thompson
Outside Low Point
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Elizabeth Erhartic
Her Specialty
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Elizabeth Erhartic
The War Against Time
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Michael Mechan-Doyle
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Shloka Shankar
Erasure 2
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Shloka Shankar
Erasure 4
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Iona Pelovska
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Iona Pelovska
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Louis Staeble
At Turns Serpentine
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Louis Staeble
Chromagnify
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Louis Staeble
Cold Tranquility
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Louis Staeble
Defiant Light
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Louis Staeble
Destiny for the Disturbed Dreamer
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W. Jack Savage
Winterland
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W. Jack Savage
Starting Again
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W. Jack Savage
We’ll Make Camp Down There
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W. Jack Savage
Cattle Call on the Warner’s Lot
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W. Jack Savage
Her Every Instinct Said No
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Sarah Kayß
Museum of Modern Art, Liverpool, UK
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Sarah KayĂ&#x;
The Memorial for Fallen German Soldiers Post-1945, Berlin, Germany
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Sarah Kayß
Bermuda Dreieck, Bochum, Germany
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Samantha Madway
Contrapositive
Think about that time when you were nine and went on your first roller-coaster ride with Rachel Evans while her dad waited at the entrance. The smells of things deepfried (and deadly before such a looping, swooping ride) were as thick as the smog you’ve since read about that blinds and binds the people of Handan and other places in the “developing world” and makes you wonder just what it is they’re developing. And you remember being really scared for someone so little—how did you have room in there for so much fear? You just barely by a breath were the thistall you had to be to board. And you were the best of friends, you and Rachel Evans, and bound your hands together as the line before you grew shorter. The line behind was so long you couldn’t see to the end, but somehow you both still knew it was growing too. It was a good day, pure and preceding braces and becoming interested in boys and wondering how best to behave badly. Prior to periods and the pregnancy scare of so many years later, and all those times afterwards when you wished Rachel Evans was still your best friend so she could hold back your hair as you puked up Patrón or percs (or both). But she became too busy being someone else’s best friend before becoming too busy being someone’s girlfriend. Except on the day you rode the roller coaster, she was your best friend, and you were hers, and you were both so excited to be grown up enough to get to go looping and swooping and swirling (no guardian required, not from ticket taker to turnstile at least). Full of giggles and grins and that glow of fear and how it could be fun. Not like the fear you feel now (which was the future back then). Think now about the time a few months ago when you were also revisiting those days back before the braces and the boys and the blackouts from too much beer or bourbon (or both), back when just waiting in line with Rachel Evans was fun, was pretty much enough. You were wondering what it was that got you where you are now when things used to be so less wrong, maybe not wrong at all. So you called her up to ask her if she remembered that roller coaster. It took some begging to keep her on the phone, a bit more to bid her to tell the tale back to you. (Since you disappointed your dignity so many times for so long, such measures didn’t take much out of you, not to mention the chemicals abetting your groveling that make certain kinds of couldn’t-care-less course through you.) According to her history, you cried the whole time and made a few attempts to claw your way out of the queue, and it was cloudy and your father was the one waiting where the smells of things deep-fried were thick as the Chinese smog. And even at ten—because she had ten transcribed in her annals—she could tell through the nose that your father had taken a break from being a parent to go buy (and do more than just buy) a beer (or many) while he was supposed to wait and meet you both at the gate (which he didn’t do until long after she’d cried herself out of tears from thinking that she was stuck and that she’d never get home). She’d had a terrible day, couldn’t wait to get away and back to her parents, who didn’t smell like they weren’t parents, who would’ve been AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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waiting at the gate like they were supposed to. She couldn’t wait to have other friends who didn’t already reek of being ill fated and soon-to-be bad news. Then she said not to call again and clicked off her phone, and you sat there for a long time saying nothing, just listening to the automated operator repeating something about hanging up and trying again. But you’d already been asked not to try again, only it was by someone else, someone real who you thought you remembered in a real way. Except as it turned out, you didn’t. For a second, you thought you smelled funnel cake and wished you could hang up something other than the phone and maybe—or maybe not—try again.
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John Stanizzi
The Verge
all night dreams of fires fires on the deck in the woods animals on fire and dreams of wind massive visible wind born as tiny spires sprouting in the garden little spooks looking to run their mouths and dreams of raging tidal surges here in the streets enormous waves whip-snapping above the trees and the houses frozen caked with thick white ice in the eternal half-light of a full moon winter night the dog didn’t know me and the kids placid on the couch thought it was a good show as they watched the weather unfold right before their very eyes as Breaking News on CNN Milosz says 20th century poetry offers no indication that we are on the verge of becoming superhuman and that poets have discovered that their words refer only to words and not to a reality which must be described as faithfully as possible and it is this truth AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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which causes despair. maybe but this morning I am pleased to say there are eight jays at the feeder dozens of sparrows six gold finches five mourning doves a nuthatch a titmouse with no tail and a little fog the guy next door who sells fire wood is driving his truck up the dirt road, I can hear the train down on Route 44, and I’m going for a second cup of coffee really
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Kami Westhoff
Overcast His mother knows what it’s like to rip inside out, the mess of her now the world’s problem. She’s lifted the log, seen the underneath’s end-of-it-all-panic. Even before he split her in two, face the color of overcast, he took exactly what he wanted, sucked the fat from her bones, pocked her skin teenage. As a child he’d cut himself until she bled, flip his eyelids so she had to watch. He’s dead now-but he slips into her bed at night, pulls back the sheet to make her shiver. She dreams him in utero, man-sized and fussy, limbs and lungs rendered useless. She pants through the contractions, strains against the urge to push, ignores the doctors that can’t stop saying, Something seems to be wrong.
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Jason Sears
97…98…99…
He rubs his eyes. They are no longer almond orbs, but squares of light, side by side like two holes in a fishing net, coiled Möbius, hidden into an ocean-fold of always—she is the grass between his toes, the assonance in a half-remembered proverb, the giggling from beneath the patio.
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Nooks Krannie
Dumb Title It’s hard when you try out your human voice in a sky blue colour & you can’t see anything but empty milk bottles/ like hungry babies/ I want to capture at least 1 percent of the faces that are forever in your knee caps/ evading girls/ my girlhood w/ after effects because my leg hair is just not enough & trapped under skin, you can actually make out kissing noises with metal plates without offending your tongue. She is all of this & more like flying/ like animal when she sits on her feet & porridge is only a careful treatment for a starless night & pigeons, so happening lately. I saw her in ecstasy when she looped her mouth in ashy lip colour/ “sex mangoes!” “sex mangoes!” is on so cool on youtube on so internet. I can’t give her a name because she’s covered in sad music & I’m a low bus in non-repair/ it snows in winter like heartsick.
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Nooks Krannie
I redline myself in realz
When people talk about fucking I never understand them. Today you looked for work in our apartment by wetting all your fingers except two because thumbs ew & instead you made them all bleed into our clothes. Instead of getting pissed off I thought about so-so, I thought about how I love perfectly toasted poptarts with raspberry filling & I thought about how the new york subway system is in my reflection in perfectly fucked roads/ blood clots/ fuck vanity, ok. So when people talk about fucking I don’t understand anything because/ or unless they are like you or me or fake me in hate juice w/ lilacs for a queen bitch or if I’m a good girl I can have poptarts later. Fuck you! & you revel like a wasabi tongue.
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Molly Kennedy
Dinner With My Parents i’ll be your white noise. your picked-up day as the phone rings, in the distance. the meaning behind the words earl grey smells like clouds and i just love the sound of my shoes against the leaves on the side walk. we’ll be that never-ending sentence you threatened to fully stop, full-stop. i’ll erase your mistakes if you promise to be gentle in the mornings. you, with your bed hardly made and your hair half-up. at my parents’ house, i see your resistance. once we’re home, the river flows. your tectonic words externalized move like empty plates waiting to rest upon the patient shelves. we’re different, it’s true, but i need your warmth. i promise not to make you take that personality test to prove to me why your hands are always warm in the winter time. i need your warmth. with jewels as eyes, you’re my every-month. at my parents’ house, you don’t speak. in the car, you’re back: your words unfold upon my lap as you lay your head down softly. the silence lingers until i run my fingers through your hair. i know you fear the words don’t resist me as you walk in the streets, but here it’s different and we’re different and i love you. i know yours are gone and mine are here but i never knew how easily it’d be for you to break that stacked glass. i’ll be your driver. i’ll take us to the ocean, driving into the distance. i’ll sweep away the sand until the beach rests empty. only when i find a shell that sings your mother’s i love you’s and do what you gotta do’s as you place it to your ear will i rest. empty, the beach remains, and the sun sets gently in the evening.
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Iona Pelovska
Tempest in a Teacup
A bit of sky is peeping through the morning window, the future slowly receding toward the past. Linen – immaculate, faded, modest. The sound of water seeping through the soil – the sound of drying flower pot. Advertised vacancy across the street. Redundant imagery in the mirror – a portrait, a fly, a crematorium, shadows. A tea cup breaks. Upset, she runs out. Her double stays behind, performing tea ceremonies.
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Joseph Parker Okay
the disappointing exception to everyone’s expectations kaya’s texts are short and her tone is cold; without saying so, it’s clear she’s bailing on the vague plans to “watch another movie or something” they had made a few days ago. it gives manuel the feeling there’s more to the distance between them than just the several city blocks separating their apartments. “i can’t sleep with anybody without getting attached,” kaya had confessed last weekend while sitting in manuel’s lap. the two of them had been left alone by a fire burning in kaya’s friends’ backyard while kaya’s friends were inside their house, finishing what was left of the josé cuervo 1.75 manuel had purchased (using the last $25 in his bank account) earlier that afternoon. manuel wasn’t thrilled about sharing his alcohol with these two other people he’d just met—he had initially hoped to have enough of the bottle left for himself to drink the following weekend, but when he picked kaya up for the bonfire earlier that night (sometime around 10:30), she mentioned both her friends had “worked past nine,” the legal closing time of all liquor stores across wisconsin. “why don’t the two of us just stay in and drink here,” manuel had suggested, knowing if they showed up to a dry house he would feel an awkward pressure of social obligation to share his tequila with kaya’s friends, instead of just with kaya, as he’d been expecting. kaya replied with phrases like “i’ve been inside all day” and “it’s friday night i don’t want to be lame,” and since manuel had recently developed strong feelings of affection for her and didn’t want to argue over something that might turn her off of him (also fearing further pressing on the subject might spotlight his poor financial situation), he gave her what he imagined a genuine smile would look like on the face of someone who’s not at all disappointed by what direction the night was already heading in, then asked for directions to her friends’ house. later that night, when he was dropping her back off, kaya asked if he wanted to come in and watch the new episode of [a tv show manuel recognized the name of but didn’t otherwise know] she had recently torrented. they entered kaya’s apartment and their lips immediately found each other, soon buckling together to the hardwood without bothering to find a light switch, both feeling rushes of confidence from the fusion of tequila and hormones as they had drunk and uninhibited sex on kaya’s floor along the unmarked borders of her kitchen and living room areas. afterward they moved to her bed where they passed out side by side, eventually awaking in the morning and attempting round two before submitting to their debilitating hangovers.
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since then they have only spoken three times, each via short-lived text message conversations initiated by manuel. now, almost a full week later, he sits on the edge of his full-size bed with his macbook open in his lap, robotically scrolling through his facebook feed, trying to find something going on nearby to replace his previous plans with kaya, which he had been looking forward to but is now certain won’t be happening. not able to find anything going on, manuel closes his browser and starts playing a sigur rós album on spotify. he sets the computer off to the side and lies back with his eyes closed. he tries distracting himself by focusing on the songs’ lyrics and imagines what each icelandic word might mean—but no matter how hard he tries, he’s still unable to free his mind from thoughts of what kaya confessed to him the weekend before. for some unknown reason—maybe because of a curse placed on him by a sorceress he unknowingly wronged, or possibly a mirror he had broken and forgotten within the past seven years—manuel feels he always turns out to be the disappointing exception to everyone’s expectations. he feels he could have spared himself this mental anguish medley of disappointment and embarrassment had he just assumed, from the moment she said it, that what kaya had really meant to confide in him was, “i can’t sleep with anybody without getting attached… except for you.”
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Jon Riccio
The Follow-Up
A television Post-it noted in scenarios: My neighbor the crime scene cleaner plays Janet Jackson’s “Escapade” because somewhere it’s 1989 and criminals know to bludgeon inside the lines. The military pilot’s Camaro – Texas license, eggplant shade. Boots lacing the sound of speed. A debutante’s cotillion sardonic, partygoers dressed as reparative therapy, Medusa’s hairline on the arms of a Rogaine box.
Index cards beside the colander, holes lassoing alfredo: I couldn’t have the chlorine without the claustrophobia, the embouchure without asbestos, intermission forgoing a sandbag’s hoist, the trapdoor never in doubt. They won’t reenter your already orbit, still you want the orchid in lieu of a horse.
Comparatives, tucked behind the Shop-Vac: Lonelier than stucco at an adobe sleepover. Than an art teacher subbing in a Fermium kiln. Corsage pinners at a reunion of bullion and soup.
Doubtful, the countermeasures to:
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Affinity: Surely there’s more to astrobotany than mission control, said the space florist. Highfalutin: We would’ve gone pflüff if not for the radon broach (a fuse box venting its ides). Gawking: At the cashier’s tracheotomy. The palindrome of her breath to a corporate apron fallen.
Upstairs, the causeway of revoking within earshot of a monastery housed in a sock factory, the temerity of an ankle gartering words like voluntary day patient the follow-up,
post-ECT
This is an anecdote of reentry: The vanity pummel. Norming of an interpersonal Cyrillic. The igloo knowing what a Tucson feels like. Mongoose sound of branches persuading a cygnet off a carport. The fulcrum jotting its rewrite to a medulla mothballed in lead.
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Kelly DuMar
Eyewitness, Bataclan They Were Shooting Shooting At Us Like If We Were Birds Were We Shot Were We If We Were Not Shot How Were We Not Birds?
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Khaloud Al-Muttalibi
Rag Doll
This wheel propels me Into a sullen hole of prayer In this un-atoned eraser of souls I am the spectacle The meat and bone The charred wings interwoven between threads of doubt The bushes of overgrown dolour The shouts, the shouts A rag doll, with a role
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Jeff Burt
Mutilation
Wisconsin farmers hid their children from the jungles of Viet Nam, not like the Jews in Warsaw, who lowered children into walls or false floors—the farmers let their children walk in public view so hometown folks could see their mutilation, so the branches of service, born from the trunk and roots of arrogance to win a war the old men didn’t know how to fight, could see the disfigured without ever leaving the front porch. Randy shot off a quarter of his foot in a hunting accident, limped enough the One-A was more a description of his single toe. Steve took to digging up the dead, wrestling with a corpse until a cop came by. Phil wrecked his health with six-packs and gasoline with the same violence he was trying to escape. Danny smoked drugs, inhaled, cooked, and ate them, his ribs so thin and sticking out pieced together by whispers of starvation, and I still travel town to town, a magician of swords, knowing the blade slices my words when I swallow into a silence few understand, so when I say love I mean mutilation, division, the acceptance of disfigurement as a type of love’s perfection.
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Jeff Burt
Into the Standing Grain
Stunned by sunrise, shocked by a school bus with torn brown seats and dirt clods on the floor, I rode with twenty other sleepy teenagers to a corn field to detassel one cob to encourage the sex of another, juveniles delinquent, punished by work. Swarms of sweetness flowed over the field, dew sliding magnifiers on the curling leaves that razor-sliced forearms uncovered. By mid-morning, moisture lifted, chaff flew and stuck, cuff-wedged, crease-hid, jammed into socks and eyelets on tennis shoes and boots, as if we were walking rods of epoxy. We withstood smut, rust and worm to eat peanut butter, bologna, spam, stale chips washed by Kool-Aid or synthetic lemonade. Jugs came in one size, large, one color, a baked-out blue. Our foreman identified the silk as beard, by August burned black at the end of the ear, but to fingers the silk AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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was a girl’s hair, a satin dress, legs you were denied, but any joke of sex he quickly broke with “back to work,” a quick jump up. He had done time, my mother told me, for defending his daughter, beat a bull who had deflowered her, left a school teacher, returned a con, found work only weeding out the rogues and driving the discarded bus. Townspeople avoided conversation with him the way two like poles of a magnet repel. Work ended at two when the bus stopped at the old brick creamery held up by mortar and the fatigue the town had in tearing it down, handles of churns mounted in the windows. I walked home with the foreman and often the only sound between us was the plastic clatter of our jugs against each other, he with a little hitch to the right and I a little hitch to the left, lunch pails slapping our thighs, lightened, empty, happy as puppies wagging by our sides. As we’d pass the final corner on Cathcart, we would eye the horizon for tomorrow’s weather, AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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I prayed for rain, for a muddy field, He looked for clear skies, for work, past the last hills for a small town’s humility, for healing, for grace.
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Jeff Burt
Teaching Punctuation to a Remedial English Class
What if there were no sentences fragments diacritically purposefully uncompleted undistinguished in the sense that starting from no meaning they may continue with none or that by replacing the periods with unending space the words and phrases can be replaced by other words and phrases and the meaning or lack of meaning means the same analogic thing but thing is not what is meant here not an object but a significance a pointing to though not a reference as if you were in a library and could look it up or into but the odd way that one misdirects and another looks in the general direction and either finds or does not find but companions the pointer so we look and by look not meaning to see which is another kettle of fish which is a euphemism for a riddle or conundrum on some days and on others a quandary or quagmire of the intellect but meaning heads up take a count of this take a census take account of sentences what punctuation marks
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Shloka Shankar
Responsibility is a Dirty Word1
This is hard for you, isn't it? I need hours, maybe days of silence. It's your last chance to have feet. The question is: what happens after? Ambivalence is a disease, you know. Nostalgia is denial. [Note to self: Find a checkmate argument for each side and admire what you cannot understand.] Are we the dining dead? What dust we dote on! Without words, I have nothing in the known universe.
1 Sources: Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope; also quotes from the movies: Midnight in Paris, The
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Laurin DeChae
No One Tells You
* that grace never kisses what is empty or what is full of darkness. when i returned home you were rabid at the mouth to drip with to drip without * late blooms tessellate when color is at its dimmest. * adrenalin keeps us from moving a static crush —weight bearing— cycles. all that energy with nowhere to go— cycles up & out. * don’t say truth i never gave you to begin no child can save anything i brought you in can save their mother and i AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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can take you out take me out * i’ll tell you how you know you’re a hero: when the sky feels more like container than open air. i haven’t soaped my body in three weeks. i hinge on the unclean. don’t worry, all good stories come with a dilemma. all characters, a tragic flaw. the sky holds all the glory. * chicken-throated we gawk skyward, look up even if it means to drown. the ability to morph, evolve—gone the truth is that no child can save her mother. the truth isn’t in saving, but in losing it all. * divine: to swallow light whole, without gagging. to strike gold. * to be further from the self that makes me, i stripped down, stepped out of skin. it is dark—always.
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C.C. Russell
Triplicate
Understanding movement is the key. For instance, her hand was behind safety glass as it pulled away. As it receded, it gently bobbed side to side in front of her wavering face. (Goodbye is too commonplace, too occasional. Ghost is too melodramatic, over-used.) (Yet one might say that her ghost was waving goodbye.) This has nothing to do with the placement of fingers (though that could skew the meaning in several directions). This has only to do with the rocking of the palm, one thousand permutations of farewell. “A writer’s job then,” he says, “is to create impact through circumstances, not to attempt the building of tone through imperceptible shifts in characterization.” “It has begun to snow,” I said. “Yes,” she said. She had no idea of the joy that I felt at being able to say these words at this moment. On the digital clock, an 8 is just a crushed 13 if you squint just right. She reads her horoscope sitting up in bed. It is 4:08 a.m. She forces each word into her eyes as if it were the end. Of uncertainty. Of her life. The suicide logic. By this time, she had expected more. Money. Children. The usual. She had become a stock character in a predictable novel, waiting for her own words to come back to haunt her. These are not connections. hey are missed flights. Three different shes and how many narrators? There is an essay being read slowly over a phonograph. It is a memoir about a young boy moving away from his childhood home. This is how the story begins: There are small corkscrews of snow winding into the globe of this image. AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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She (#2) sees no relevance. She slides her jacketed arm into the crook of my own. She smiles up at me, wonders if we will ever connect. There are voices in our heads. Rarely do they complete their stories for us.
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Thomas Mundt
Magenta
We appreciated the attendant risks, Natalie and I. There was a good-to-excellent chance we could end up with more than we bargained for or, worse, precisely what we expected. If you were one of the lucky ones whose digits hadn’t been claimed by The Detonations, you could count the Risk Level: Periwinkle days in any calendar year on one hand. Otherwise, you were looking at Magenta; not quite Orchid, a few shades from Sangria. We wanted tilapia tacos from Cocina Michoacana really badly, though. There was a new chipotle mayo purportedly developed by a former Dow biochemist that just became the first condiment to earn five Platinum Medallions on Delectable. We couldn’t submit to a fiefdom of fear. *** Things were trending Currant during the walk over. The headmaster of a Montessori school on the outskirts of Casper, Wyoming reported connectivity issues with Mothren (or “Mother Hen,” to which the alert system was often colloquially referred), despite having unplugged and re-plugged the cord. Better To Be Safe Than Scar-y, just like the subway posters insisted. Loran Mothren, CEO of Pallor Ventures, Inc. and lead engineer in the development of his namesake technology, publicly defended the use of the triage photos in the latest Mothren print campaign at a recent fundraising event, calling them “the very-real consequence of complacence.” There was a rumor that a famous child actor-turned-synthetic amphetamine addict was among the depicted disfigured but was later quashed; Pallor assured the community that they had no need to plumb the septic tank of celebrity, that the mangled and charred were already among us and eager to contact Marketing. Our arms locked in V-Form, devices at manufacturer-recommended 45° and 315° respectively, we stole glances of bungalows and two-flats we liked between feed updates. A dynamic had developed on walks where Natalie playfully reminded me to remain vigilant lest I perform a cervical strain-inducing sex act and I watched birds, the whole ignorant lot of them. Yes, there was the occasional hazard of flying into bay windows but they knew nothing of inevitable loss with the illusion of preventability or vice versa. I wanted to propose a trade. Upon arrival at Cocina Michoacana we were pleased by the al fresco option, the lack of Kevlar’d personnel standing sentinel. The server told us the owner typically reopened the patio at Magenta, that the latest updates suggested the situation in Casper had blown over. Our devices still showed Blush but we chalked up the discrepancy to network speed or lack thereof. AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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It was important to show resolve in the face of The Separatists, the server insisted. Menus were forthcoming but could he get us any limeades or horchatas to start? *** It all looked like the .wav files my dad had me pull off some ancient phones last Easter, handheld footage from the races he took me to as kid, funny cars and monster trucks enveloped in exhaust. Every now and again a head or some wheels poked through the haze; otherwise, just gray. I was on my ass, back flush against an overturned wrought-iron table, the ceaseless squeal of a misdial to a fax machine in both ears. There were flashes through the smoke and shells rolled along the sidewalk and collected against the pop-up fencing. Natalie and a beetle-looking Rent-A-Cop wrapped gauze around the portions of me that didn’t look like octopus tentacles and patted me down, presumably searching for my government-issued pistol. It was routine for me to leave it in a strongbox in our guest bedroom, crack wise about it being in my Other Pants when we were emboldened to go outdoors by a Watermelon or Bubblegum. I hated the smell of the lubricant, I’d protest; Natalie would counter with an insistence that the $350 fine for going through a checkpoint without it could come out of my homebrewing fund. I shook my head so they’d stop wasting their time. I watched as the Rent-A-Cop produced two slender briefcases and, when unlatched, the bulbous heads of RPGs. Natalie slung hers over her shoulder and followed Beetle Man into the fog. I closed my eyes and smelled lard.
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Melanie Faith
In the Movie of His Life, the Antagonist Brushes His Teeth in the Guest Bathroom
Stand at the sink. Do not forget it is impossibly a.m. or it is a hair’s breadth from midnight. Come to the porcelain slightly wobbly with sleep— the nightmare about the brown bear that bee-lined across the parking lot, reached around, pressed its furry face to your face, it’s fangs flat against your skin. You felt the beast breathing out and breathing in. Or arrive slightly stooped with sleep-hunger. All day you’ve hefted a satchel of books or flimsy sacks heaped with groceries that all too soon will disappear from cupboards or the burden of small, scraped bodies you’ve scooped from floors after tears but not cried your own. Avoid the mirrored door. Swing it open. Avoid: the antacids, the cotton balls, the tincture, the Neosporin, the aftershave with the crusty cap. Reach onto the wobbly second shelf. Clutch and remove the silken plastic tube of paste. Fresh mint! Remove from the cup your cardinal red brush. In this act of hope, do not count the number of up-down or sideways. In this act of refreshment, do not count the items due, the actions overdue, the unreturned promises. Do not dwell on how rickety it feels to be a visitor. In this ritual, lean into the vanity that holds you upright against its firm surface. Rinse. Spit. Brush. Rinse. Spit. Turn the Cold nob. Listen AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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to the reassuring clink-clink-clink of hidden pipes that still work. Affirming you are vulnerable. Turn off the Cold. It is not a half-bad start. It is not a half-bad end. Still habitable, you are the human animal. In one way if not all ways clean again.
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Jason Namey
Shoot You For It
Once we saw a coin flip just wasn’t the fair way to decide the captain of our High School Intramural Basketball Team, we settled for an old-fashioned duel. Which was for the best, since me and Marty both liked to run point and take threes from the right corner. He said that his dad kept an old Civil War pistol in his office and it should still fire. “It better,” I said. “I want a cool scar to show off at games. “Yeah except but the scar is gonna be through your heart,” he said. I had a bow and arrow that me and pops had whittled for a Boy Scout badge. *** The number one issue to solve was how many paces. Marty kept saying ten and I asked ten each or ten altogether and he said he didn’t know but ten altogether didn’t seem like very far and I’ll admit I agreed so we settled on twenty each. “You’re sure that pistol will fire?” I asked him while we practiced our free throws. “Sure, I’m sure,” he said. “My Dad said that our great-gramps used it to kill Robert E. Lee.” “I mean, first off, I highly doubt that,” I said. “Doubt this,” he said, throwing a hook-shot over the backboard. “Okay,” I said, jogging over to get it. “I can easily doubt that.” “I got change,” he shouted, holding his hands out for a pass. I skipped it to him. I already felt bad that on Sunday I was gonna shoot an arrow through his Adam’s apple. *** The number two issue to solve was how many people to invite. “I’m concerned that the more word gets out, the more likely it is that cops will show up,” Marty said, guarding me at the top of the key. “So what?” I said, dribbling the ball between my legs. “They can’t do anything if we both agreed to the duel.” “Where did you read that?” he asked. “The Constitution,” I said. “And besides, I’m really hoping Samantha comes.” “Of course she’s coming,” he said, stopping. “She’s my girlfriend.” She wasn’t his girlfriend. He had never talked to her. “For now,” I went past him. My lay up slammed off the bottom of the rim. “For now and ever,” he said. “Now come on, let’s run suicides.” *** The number three issue to solve was how to prevent retribution. AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he said. “Because for A: you aren’t going to win and for B: you aren’t going to win.” “It’s just that for 1: I don’t trust that any lawyer who keeps a Civil War pistol in his office is shy of violence, and for 2: I’m afraid the desire for revenge in your Dad’s heart re: me killing you will be greatly increased when he sees that I’m banging your Mom as well as also your fake girlfriend.” “Samantha would never bang you on account she would never bang somebody who has a two inch hole through their heart because due to the fact that said person, as in you, would be covered in blood and/or dead.” “I feel like she would be used to banging somebodies with two-inch-somethings with regards to because she bangs you, ignoring the fact that you guys have never banged and you’ll die a virgin.” Marty steamed. “Stop talking about Samantha, okay?” “Make me,” I said. He pegged me in the head with the basketball. I dropped my Gameboy. “Hey,” I said, rubbing the fresh welt. “What the hell?” “I said leave her out of this,” he screamed. “You wanna do this right now?” I yelled. “We can do this right now.” “Right. Now. But I have to go get the pistol because I don’t have it since I’m wearing basketball shorts.” “Alright, let’s meet back here at eight thirty, after dinner.” “Make it nine,” he said. “I want to watch The Amazing Race.” “Nine-fifteen then,” I said. “Because The Amazing Race ends at nine and you can’t get here in zero minutes.” “Okay, nine-fifteen,” he said. *** As I rode my bike home, I thought about how great it was gonna be to be captain of the Intramural Basketball Team. Then I could finally pick my squad. Big Rick would be a great center. I knew I could get him to join. I just needed somebody to get us in a room together. It would be a tough sell, since he’d have to quit the Varsity team, but I know that once he sees how much more passionate we are, he will get swept up. Slick Dick would be a great shooting guard. I once saw him crumple his homework and throw it into the trashcan from across the room. Okay, it didn’t actually go into the trashcan but it hit the side, which is pretty tough from that distance. Then we could march into the principle’s office and demand he give us permission to start an Intramural Basketball League. Why would we start an Intramural Basketball League when we already have Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Freshmen teams, he would say. Because those teams lack the passion and love for the sport only found in 3 vs. 3 intramural leagues, Big Rick would say. Hey, the principle would say. I thought you were on the varsity team, Rick? The first freshman to ever do so? Yeah, Rick would say. I was, on account of being the best freshman AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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basketball player in Lake City High history. But then, because of all the long hours spent practicing post-moves in the driveway, I lost my love for the game, which was only rediscovered when I saw how passionate these little fellas are, and now we’re also best friends, too. The principle would have to give us the league after that. Wouldn’t he?
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Matt Dennison
Connecticut Pond Search
It takes three days to set up a proper kidnapping in Connecticut. Hustled ‘em under a truck, he did, demented and soiled with almost a feeling of goodness—the nimble-quick descent upon violence dramatically slobbed though nothing really hurt, just that one mouth above the drain calling out I promise to love everbuddy real soon! But God is not normal, fish are not kind, trees mostly ungenerous, the boy realized at his daddy's birthday party, whispering in his mother's ear: Do I have to mean it?
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Matt Dennison
Instructions to the Dog
If anyone knocks I'm not at home If anyone calls I'm not at home If anyone writes I'm not at home If anyone cries I'm not at home If anyone offers I'm not at home If anyone wants I'm not at home If anyone needs I'm not at home If anyone sells I'm not at home If anyone touches I'm not at home If anyone waits I'm not at home If anyone hovers I'm not at home If anyone begs I'm not at home If anyone rattles I'm not at home If anyone jimmies I'm not at home If anyone enters I'm not at home If anyone plays I'm not at home If anyone movies I'm not at home If anyone grieves I'm not at home If anyone works I'm not at home If anyone slaves I'm not at home If anyone smiles I'm not at home If anyone leaves I'm not at home If anyone churches I'm not at home If anyone devils I'm not at home If anyone cooks leave it by the door
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Laurie McCulloch
Before the Mirror
Be five again. Sneak into the backyard in the cold early morning and hide under the picnic table. Feel the goosebumply pleasure of trying on your shiny white shoes for the very first time. Become a princess. Turn your picnic table into a ship that floats away on a dewy green sea. Do not let your best friend Corbin board your ship with his stick. “But it’s a sword,” he will say. A sword might come in handy, you think, but remember how it killed you last time. Stamp your pretty feet No. “Then how am I supposed to rescue you?” You don’t need rescuing. Tell him the story of the brave knight who lives down the street, the one who wears white bandages around his head from fighting the big ugly dragon called The Tumour. Wave your magic wand and fill the space where the dragon lives with smiles and blue marbles. “See?” you will say. Corbin will make fists with his hands and stomp away. That’s okay. The boy next door rides a yellow chariot without training wheels. Fall in love with him instead. And when the sun rises high enough in the sky to dry up your sea and awaken your kingdom, when the clatter of pots and pans comes to you from the shore, when the screen door slams and scuff marks appear on the toes of your shoes, Grow up! Grow up! Grow up! Look again.
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David Eves
To Kiss You as Warriors (i) How will I be tomorrow, then? How? I will have to be with my brother or I won’t have me. The promise that I will visit you will soon only be a lie. I have come to give a last farewell, give you words a heart hasn’t yet said.
(ii) It is difficult to leave a flower such as you, Walking Boy. Barely grown from your mother, barely a man made, The lord took you without asking anybody — yet your heart never stopped; it’s simply calmed as you’ve gone closer near the creator. I don’t want to believe that we might have to run away without you.
(iii) Words can’t describe the feeling that I will continue to be created away from you, Walking Boy. I head left, struggling to remember where it is you're going. Speak, heart, words I myself would like to say... Your picture will remain always in our heart’s face.
(iv) I want kiss you, at the forefront, as warriors, and soon I will, I will come to meet you. I don’t want to kiss without, even once, blessing the otherworld. Be calm in the paradise of God! Goodbye brave! Goodbye! Mare will miss us! Goodbye
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…Contributors… Poets Khaloud Al-Muttalibi Khaloud Al-Muttalibi is a poet and translator. She is the author of eight books including the recent collection, A Void, Full Of You. She resides in the United Kingdom. Much of her work has been translated into various languages including Russian, Serbian, Punjabi and Romanian. Her poetry has been published in a vast array of worldwide literary magazines and journals, both in print and online. She has appeared in several books and anthologies. Jeff Burt Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has work in or forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, The Nervous Breakdown, Watershed, and Clerestory. He won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award, and has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology. Benjamin DeVos Benjamin DeVos is an interdisciplinary artist from Philadelphia. Most recently his writing has been published in Requited, and is forthcoming in decomP. His chapbook, 'Freaking Out the Neighborhood' was published in November with Flutter Press. Chris Crew Christopher Crew is a teacher, father and (extremely) amateur ping pong player. His poetry has appeared inThe Sycamore Review, The Marlboro Review, Natural Bridge and Seattle’s Poetry on Buses. His work is forthcoming in Poplorish, mush/mum, Otoliths, and of/with. Matt Dennison After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans, Matt Dennison finished his degree at Mississippi State University where he won the National Sigma Tau Delta essay competition (judged by X.J. Kennedy). His work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He currently lives in a 110-year-old house with "lots of potential" and can be reached at columbusmatt@cableone.net. Kelly Dumar Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from the Boston area. Her poems are published in many literary magazines, including “Lumina Online,” “Corium,” “Cape Cod Review,” “Kindred,” “Apeiron,” and “Tupelo Quarterly,” and her award-winning poetry chapbook, “All These Cures,” was published by Lit House Press in 2014. Her award winning plays have been produced around the US and Canada, and are published by dramatic publishers. Kelly founded and produces the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College, now in its 10th year. She serves on the boards & faculties of The International Women’s Writing Guild, and the Transformative Language Arts Network. David Eves David is a Scottish graduate based in Tokyo. His recent poetry harnesses online software – in the present poem, instant-translation websites – to create distinctive and stylistically fresh voices. Aside from poetry, he is interested in photography, experimental art, travel, and other things that would make you reluctant to meet him. Melanie Faith Melanie Faith enjoys warm weather, snail mail, tiny houses, and collecting shoes and books. She is an auntie, a tutor at a college preparatory high school, and a freelance writing consultant. Her writing has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and most recently published in The Writer's Monthly Review Magazine and Embodied Effigies (both 2015). Her flash fiction placed in the Bevel Summers Prize for AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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the Short Short Story and was subsequently published in Shenandoah (2014). Her Tiny House chapbook was published by Porkbelly Press in 2015, and her WWII-era poetry collection, Catching the Send-off Train, appeared at Wordrunner eChapbooks (summer 2013). Laurin DeChae Laurin DeChae is a M.F.A. candidate for poetry at the University of New Orleans, where she acts as the associate editor for Bayou Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, burntdistrict, Rust + Moth & Crack the Spine, and elsewhere. Molly Kennedy Molly Kennedy is pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Literature at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. She mainly writes prose-poetry and short stories, infatuated with her modern and contemporary influences. Follow her poetic pursuits here:http://molxlyxpoetry.tumblr.com.
Nooks Krannie Nooks is a girl/person poet from Canada. She's half Persian/half Palestinian. Her words have appeared in Alien Mouth, Potluck and Wu-Wei Fashion Mag. She loves a lot and too much. http://nkrannie.tumblr.com/ Laurie McCulloch Laurie McCulloch lives in Turner Valley, a town with a vibrant arts community in the foothills of Alberta, Canada. She is working on her first novel. Jon Riccio Jon Riccio studied viola performance at Oberlin College and the Cleveland Institute of Music. An MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, current and forthcoming poems appear in Cleaver, Futures Trading,Hawai'i Review, Mead, Yellow Chair Review and Really System, among others. A former Michigander, he resides in Tucson. Jason Sears Jason Sears is a West Philadelphia poet. His work can be found in The Monarch Review and elsewhere online. He edits By&By Poetry. Shloka Shankar Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from Bangalore, India. She loves experimenting with found poetry and Japanese short-forms such as haiku and haibun. Her work has most recently appeared in Otoliths, shufPoetry, Poetry WTF?!, Gnarled Oak, and Prune Juice. She is also the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom. Cathryn Shea Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Gargoyle, Gravel, Main Street Rag, Permafrost, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Snap Bean, is by CC.Marimbo (2014, Berkeley). She is a past editor and adviser for Marin Poetry Center Anthology and is the author of dozens of software and database manuals. Cathryn lives in Fairfax, CA and spends part of each day watching over a covey of California quail. See www.cathrynshea.com. John Stanizzi John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall (www.antrimhousebooks.com), After the Bell, and Hallelujah Time! (www.bigtablepublishing.com). His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner,The New York Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, and many others. He has read at many venues throughout Connecticut, and teaches English in an adjunct capacity at Manchester Community College. Kami Westhoff
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Kami Westhoff's work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Meridian, Carve, Third Coast, Phoebe, Sundog Lit, The Pinch, Passages North, and Redivider. She lives in Bellingham, WA, where she teaches Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Alyssa Yankwitt Alyssa Yankwitt is a poet, photographer, teacher, bartender, documenter, and earth walker. Her poems and photographs have previously appeared in Fruita Pulp, Gingerbread House, Penwheel.lit, Yellow Chair Review, Metaphor Magazine, Alyss, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Spry Literary Journal and are forthcoming in Gargoyle. Alyssa has incurable wanderlust, enjoys drinking whiskey, hates writing about herself in third person, and loves a good disaster.
Fictioners L.L. Madrid L.L. Madrid lives and writes in Tucson. She resides with her four-year-old daughter, an antisocial cat, and the occasional scorpion. Her work can be found in places like Literary Orphans, The Furious Gazelle, and in shoeboxes under her bed. Samantha Madway Samantha Madway is engaged in the lengthy process of transcribing hundreds of pages of her writing from barely legible blue ink into reader-friendly (twenty-first-century) Times New Roman type. She loves her dogs, Freddie and Charlie, more than anything else in the universe. Thomas Mundt Thomas Mundt is the author of the short story collection You Have Until Noon To Unlock The Secrets Of The Universe (Lady Lazarus Press). More stories and Twitter tomfoolery can be found at jonathan taylor thomas nathan mundt, dds and @Jheri_Seinfeld, respectively. Jason Namey Jason is an MFA student at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. His work can also be found in El Portal and fields. Joseph Parker Okay Joseph Parker Okay is from Milwaukee, WI. His work has previously appeared in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Maudlin House, ExFic, and more. You can find him at josephparkerokay.tumblr and on Twitter @josephparkerok C.C. Russell C.C. Russell has lived most of his life so far in Wyoming (with short stints in New York and Ohio). His poetry and short fiction have appeared here and there in print and online. His favorite color is usually purple. He can be followed on Twitter @c_c_russell if you’re so inclined.
Artists Favielle Favielle is a 22-year-old collage artist and illustrator based in Puerto Rico, who is currently doing a multidisciplinary bachelor in photojournalism, journalism and international relations. The reason why she started making collages was because she could get creative with the art of other people and still find space to make it her own. Michael Mechan-Doyle Michael Mechan–Doyle holds a BA (Hons) in English and Creative Writing and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Salford. He is twenty-five, lives in Manchester UK, and is currently writing his first novel. AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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Elizabeth Erhartic Elizabeth Erhartic is a student at Gardner-Webb University who doesn’t have enough patience to write novels, so gravitates toward poetry. She loves how blackout combines the arts of painting and writing into a simple beauty. Sarah Katharina Kayß Sarah Katharina Kayß is an internationally published author and winner of the manuscript award of the German Writers Association (2013) for her poetry and essay collection “Ich mag die Welt, so wie sie ist” (I like the world the way it is) which was published by Allitera in Munich in 2014. She edits the bilingual literary magazine “The Transnational” and is currently a PhD student in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. Her poems, photographs and essays have been published in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the UK, Italy, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. You can visit her photography portfolio at http://www.sarahkatharinakayss.com/photo/
Iona Pelovska Iona Pelovska is a Montreal based writer/artist/filmmaker and a PhD in Communicaiton and Culture. Her film work focuses on the poetics of cinema as techno-language while writing, her first love, has simply become one with her life. Her work has been presented at conferences and festivals in Europe and North America. W. Jack Savage W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of seven books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over six-hundred of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California. Louis Staeble Louis Staeble lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in “Agave”, “Blinders Journal”, “Blue Hour”, “Digital Papercut”, "Driftwood", “Fifth Wednesday Journal”, “Four Ties Literary Review”, "Inklette Magazine", “Microfiction Monday”, ”On The Rusk”, "Paper Tape Magazine", “Revolution John”, “Rose Red Review”, “Sonder Review”, “Timber Journal”, “Up The Staircase Quarterly” and “Your Impossible Voice”. His web page can be viewed athttp://staeblestudioa.weebly.com or lstaebl.wix.com/closeup. David J. Thompson David J. Thompson is a former prep school teacher and coach who has been traveling since October 2013. His interests include film, jazz, and minor league baseball. His latest poetry/photography chapbook, And Thou Upon Earth, is available from Nerve Cowboy in Austin, Texas.
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