Power Outage

By Bud Jennings

Even with his most successful years a blur in life’s rearview mirror, he finds ways to enjoy the annual summer vacation in Provincetown—where youthful vigor is the local currency, where he’d once spent lavishly, swinging ample arms, puffing a buoyant chest, sweeping his forelock back to unveil the pair of radiant, flirtatious eyes—because there’s still the beach, the heralded Cape Cod light and the gallery openings, where doddering or pulling out a crumpled handkerchief or other reminders of Time’s kleptomania don’t offend other attendees; but on his last Saturday night the power goes out all over town, making it impossible to read his book and daring him to venture out of the rental cottage and proceed carefully under a milky crescent moon that isn’t much help, his hands outstretched to protect him from obstacles cloaked in blackness, until he reaches Commercial Street, a rivulet of phones and flashlights wielded by crowds that have been pushed out of the bars and clubs, a phytoplankton tide of pissed-off queens who paid a full cover charge for an abbreviated night; and the only way they can salvage their moment is by hooking up al fresco—everywhere (liaisons on porches and behind rhododendron bushes, three-ways at intersections, schtupping in alcoves, special deliveries on the steps of the Post Office), their groaning the musical score to accompany the wispy strings of almost-light draped atop the immobile cupolas overhead and the gyrating forms at eye-level; so with the darkness blindfolding the throngs like the statue of Justice, the man seeks a brief respite from his banishment…as he approaches an animate little assembly in the parking lot of Land’s End Marine Supply, and he is grateful that no one pushes him away or can see him enough to look through him as if he were harbor mist, is emboldened to inch forward to where his shoulder brushes another’s, and when someone gently draws him into the fold, the man closes his eyes, opens his arms to memories of the long-ago epoch, evenings when some stranger’s hand would caress his skin, would summon a shudder—but then there is a flicker of light that is not lightning, followed by a few more, and finally the heartless electricity reignites at once all the town’s lamps, startling the man, who steps away from the circle, doesn’t even glance at any of their faces or let any of them see his as he turns to walk back to the cottage and his book—like the old days, when the touching stopped and he’d remember he was alone.

Bud Jennings is a former polydactyl, completed NYU’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, was a finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, has been and will be published in several literary journals, teaches English in a public high school, and with his husband is the obedient parent of two adopted cats. 

Photo by China Jorrin.

Who Branded Jesus?

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.

Cinnamon Roll

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.