University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by Aria Han My grandparents live on the 27th floor of an apartment building in Paju, Seoul, South Korea. There are stairs, although no one would ever take those stairs all the way up to the 27th floor. Mostly, they take the elevator, a musty little thing that’s neither breaking down nor gleaming. Everything has… Continue reading A Broken Elevator
by Jessi Fuller Fields I'm-wrong-about-this threatens to drop down dreadful-sincere but here's what I know— the smell of roast beef stoppers me and the pressure builds shooting me back to a table set for six on a Sunday father at the head God on his lips our hands join in blessings for the feast of… Continue reading Sturdy as potatoes
(to Diane Mehta) by Drew Pisarra I lie on grass and stare at clouds while a friend reads the cosmic musings of Wallace Stevens, something about a snake and the snow and somebody's mother. Not mine. A figure more commonplace than divine. I don't comprehend it in full, even when my friend decodes two cryptic… Continue reading Leap Year
by Eitan Perlin I've been told many times by many people I remind them of someone they knew who killed themselves it's odd to be a specter a reflector of a long love lost or a good friend gone it doesn't sting nor am I complaining merely stating the peculiarity of embodying a medium ushering… Continue reading I, Charon
by Rhonda Browning White She hangs bundles of lavender, peppermint, catnip, and chamomile that dangle like hands tied at fragile wrists drying into skeletal bones to be crumbled into usefulness beyond their death Dangle like hands tied at fragile wrists beside stitched chimes of leather britches, beans she will soak back to life in winter,… Continue reading Delicacies
by Scout Faller stained as we are with forgetting. sitting like an idiot and with your one spoken language, american english, a poorly fitted coat. hair flat, face to the sun like you knew all her names before addressing her. dripping with the exigence, a snotty bitch—reaching for the coffee cup in a way that… Continue reading notes app poem
by Candice Kelsey Today, we are ordered into total lockdown. I tell my students to cluster away from the doors, Avoid direct visibility of scope & crosshairs. 12-gauge semiautomatic shotguns, Glock 20s rarely miss. Their assignments become locking doors, stacking Desks in barricade, turning out lights. I would gladly, without any hesitation, take A spray… Continue reading This is Only a Drill
by Travis Stephens Loose valves, a rocker tip-tapper, something out of whack in my chest. It rattles. Bangs. Time for a tune up, god knows, not a replacement, maybe a little service. Pluck it out. Set it on the work bench. Pressure wash it of memory, of rust and greasy stuff. Maybe a new coat… Continue reading Heart Medicine
by Hannah Mitchell Writing always feels like a seance at my desk. The souls of my foremothers rise, Curve, twist themselves through my pen. (They demand I write in pen.) (There will be no erasures.) Let me introduce my hand-me-down heart: At its core, a lamp trimmed With cast-off buttons. (My grandmother's mother couldn't write… Continue reading My Grandmothers Write Through Me
by Hannah Mitchell He did not, probably, work with his own hands. A river-god, seated beneath an arch: Unconfined, unlimited, A chemical vessel. Remarkable hills at the foot of the rainbow (The most beautiful of all the colors, A delicate violet, a deep green) Gently exhaled, "We have our joys and sorrows in common." Narcissus… Continue reading The Promotion of Narcissus
Ignatian Literary Magazine 