Legendary Creatures

green manOur August special issue has it all: a monster named Tamara, a feathered octopus, the Tricks Man, a mermaid, a dragon, a pterodactyl, gargoyles, a Myakka skunk ape, a knight, a gorgon, a modern Green Man, Greek mythology, an Alien, a sasquatch, a velocipede bird attack, and more.

So it’s basically a family reunion.

Read it online or download the pdf.

Δείτε τι θέλετε; Θέλετε να βλέπετε

(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.

Submissions Are Open for Legendary Creatures Issue

Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

For this one, we are looking for fiction AND poetry. In order to be considered, your submission must feature a legendary creature, such as a mythical beast or a figure from cryptozoology—including the Jersey Devil, naturally, but not limited to him. Dinosaurs and other animals confined to past geological eras are also fair game, because the only place they currently exist as living beings is in our collective imagination. (Which totally bums us out if we think about it for too long. Cheer us up by writing something incredible and sending it to us.)

Short stories: Submit one story of up to 5000 words (this is a bit longer than our regular monthly magazine limit, which is still 4200 words).

Flash fiction: Submit one to three stories of up to 1000 words each in a single document.

Poetry: Submit up to a total of 100 lines of poetry in a single document. This can be one long poem or multiple short poems. We welcome formal verse and skillfully crafted free verse. If prose poetry is your thing, please submit it as flash fiction, and keep in mind that we are wary of huge blocks of text with no white space.

No reprints. Simultaneous submissions are fine; just withdraw your work if another magazine snatches it up first. (And if that magazine finds a bag of flaming chupacabra turds on its front porch the next morning, don’t look at us.) Include a brief third-person bio with your submission.

Deadline: June 1, 2014

We accept hard-copy submissions delivered by dragons. If your dragon is unreliable, you may use Submittable.

P. S. We are still open for regular fiction submissions. (They have their own guidelines.)