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By Shannon Waite



I’d been born on a wide, unzipped night, to a married mother, might as well have been a single mother, because her husband Joe wasn’t even my dad, and she may not have known it to start but she birthed me to be the best one, the only one, the savior, and I would be idolized – what I'm saying is: worship me, because I’ve learned that if you hear it enough, it’s how you’ll come to know me ––– this all started in Orlando, maybe Atlanta, might have been Dallas, because Joe stayed even after she got pregnant by someone who wasn’t him, he stayed until he moved us, and not much is known after that so I’ll tell you about it; Joe abuses and moves, abuses and moves, a lot, and I wasn’t enough, and sometimes I’d escape before Joe is never heard from again, and so what, my mother may have thought me insane, one day she claims I am beside myself, says I have a demon and I am mad, why listen to him, and so what, kids ignore me, the growing bruises on my forearms, claim I’m strange, wild, the only one, but this is how I will come to be known and kept front and center in people’s minds, because I declare myself to be God and how else do I become God but by letting you hang me, nails through my wrists, and I start asking myself whose fault is this, and it’s theirs, yours, I know it to be true; after I was born, my mother put a sign above my bed, “This child is destined to be the cause of the falling and the rising of many”, and it’s your fault I am this way, the rise and fall is what I’ll do because I know it’s my destiny; somewhere in another time, I was enraged, jealous, and cruel, some might call it stern, but when I came to you all I showed mercy and that’s because I know how it’s done – reinventing my public image – I planned, planned, made myself into who they want me to be, their savior, because people will follow you if you tell them what they want to hear, tell them they are saved, worthy, and all the damn mistakes they made are forgiven, I forgive them, now they follow me even though I know nothing – it helps if you act like you do (the kingdom of god is within you and it's me who can help you discover it – where true life, eternal life is found) but the place I claim to save them from, the Hell we live in, will be made by me, let me tell you how Hell didn’t exist before I came – because I am one of you, one of us, not an outsider; maybe Jesus was a suicide – he did it to himself – yes, I get it, because I don’t care if I live or die, but who's to know, to say, that I need saving - after all, suffering is what transforms us and now I will save you I think while looking at the gun, glossy and firm, warm in my palm, and while I do not wish to kill you, I wish to destroy your body, make you lose it, I think while looking at the front doors, I have fostered a death cult, I know, about the people in hall passing right now, I hear the bell ring, and maybe I’m better than Jesus, my ministry is now, and I’m younger, earlier, I’m known, recognizable, better than all competitors and, after all this, I think, What Would Jesus Do?



Shannon Waite has taught English and Creative Writing in Detroit; her fiction has been published in PANK, Hobart, and elsewhere.


Photo by Shannon Waite.

By Jason Schwartzman



I fucked up, okay, and I ate the whole jumbo-sized cinnamon roll, which was apparently not meant for me — it was meant for Jonny’s brother’s wife who was pregnant and all she was eating those days were jumbo cinnamon rolls, and yes, I was high, which was why I devoured it, gluttonous, ravenous bite by gluttonous, ravenous bite, but no one saw me or so I thought, except Michael did, always Michael who thwarted me like a cartoon villain and everyone said I was DEAD once Steve found out, which he did the next morning when Michael gleefully told him and apparently I’d done something very wrong and I was scolded and every adult at the table looked at me like cinnamon-roll-scarfing was the eighth, deadliest sin and god, I was humiliated, the criminal of the weekend, a monster, but then everyone forgot about it and presumably they bought more cinnamon rolls and it became a funny story I told in college, even a trademark of mine, with someone once even requesting “the cinnamon roll story,” then college ended and a year or so passed and Jonny died in an accident and now the story is about that, and only that, the last time I saw my friend.



Jason Schwartzman is the author of NO ONE YOU KNOW, a resident of Oakland, and a new dad. 


Photo by Jason Thayer.

By Jun Chou



an old woman meets my pace as i’m walking along a road in Taiwan (a country where i was born but not where i was raised) and starts speaking to me in Taiwanese (a dialect i’d understand if i stayed but don’t because i didn’t) and right as i am about to politely, pitifully excuse myself, a moped whizzes by and barely knocks us over; as she stabilizes on my forearm i exhale “are you okay” in my broken mandarin and she nods, smiles, and pats my arm gently, shocking in the way it evokes my grandma (who lived and died alone in Taiwan, with whom i communicated primarily in gestures and expressions and touch), and i think of how odd it is for our elders to reassure us (when they are the ones with the frail bodies closer to death) and as i gaze up at all the illegible neon signs above us, i silently mourn this familiar space between feeling like home and feeling like i will never truly belong (anywhere)



Jun Chou is a writer based in Brooklyn.


Art by Jun Chou.

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