(See What you Want; Want What you See)
Jerrod Schwarz

There is a basilisk in my left eye, rapping the
sclera like cat claws on a window pane.
Sometimes, I can see its shingled
bends when I turn on my bathroom light in
the morning, when it zigzags from my cones
to my rods.

When my second love (who smiled) left for
Houston and said that our arms were too
short, it hissed Greek proverbs, scrawled them
red in the snowy edges:

Δείτε τι θέλετε; Θέλετε να βλέπετε

It sleeps when I sleep, and I dream
its dreams, reveling in its visions
of Cyrene rebuilt, writhing against
ancient, swollen women buying silphium.

My father (who always smiled) often spoke of a
demon who coiled around his left ear canal, who sculpted
marble columns in his Eustachian tube and
pierced Greek symbols into his stirrup with
tipped fangs:

Δείτε τι θέλετε; Θέλετε να βλέπετε

Only once I asked it for a name, for
nomenclature. And when it sibilated
I am instinct, I laughed because
she used to smile and he never frowned,
and because I had worried over the wrong eye.

JERROD SCHWARZ is a student at the University of South Florida. He currently lives in Tampa, and he has forthcoming work in Squalorly Literary Journal.

Roselyn Perez

You have turned me to stone.
Mistaken me for an enemy
My throat is full
lips weighed down with the things I need to say
I stand in your garden and watch

A hero,
a coward, come on flying feet
cloaked in Death’s shadow.
He cannot see you,
only your reflection
I watch, wishing my voice could wake you,
my scream slams uselessly against my stone skull,
and, so he takes your head,

But your blood creates the red sea
You birth a slithering multitude
that spans across continents
Death has not rendered you powerless,
But a weapon of the gods.
I watch, remember, and stand as a monument to you.

ROSELYN PEREZ is the fifth of six children, all girls. She is 26 years old, resides in Southern California, and is studying creative writing and psychology at California State University Northridge. Her poems and short stories have been featured in Eclipse Literary Journal, Think Journal, writer’s type.com, and Magnets and ladders.

Andrew Hemmert

Stippled with ghost-white
water roses, the river slips through

cypress. Lightning drips from
clouds, bright veins in

grey flesh. By April
rain my tracks’ message is

damned to erasure, but I am
in good company — here,

fox prints follow a heron’s
path, and winding lines show a snake’s

escape. I too
offer my signs

to soft earth, my foot
a stamp

in shore mud
sealing wax.

ANDREW HEMMERT recently graduated from the University of South Florida. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology. He will begin a Creative Writing MFA at Southern Illinois University in the fall. His poems have appeared inDriftwood Press, Symmetry Pebbles, and thread.