University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by Colten Dom My hands turn to your back like tonight’s sky, gleaming somewhere in an ancestral skull revealed by a retreating glacier— reconvened after a cloudy evening, squinting, kneading familiar structures, lines of gravity placing each stain as I find it. Freckles metastasize; stars pull and are themselves pulled. You touch my skin to… Continue reading Constellation
by Ashley Hardin I’m sorry if you asked me a question and there was no reply. I was in the middle of listening to my invasive thoughts about a peculiar conflict in front of me. One-third of my grandparents’ circular ottoman was missing its light brown leather top straight down. This error had started to grow… Continue reading OCD
by Sarah Bess Jaffe We watched Bin Laden get shot through the window of an Irish pub in Queens. Well, we didn’t see it but, you know. I thought you were such a big deal. We were sunbitten that day. Remember when we liked the guy in charge,in spite of everything? We rode our bikes everywhere,stuck on the BQE’s hot ribbon,for a daylong noon… Continue reading Dive Bars
by Aidan Cox Turning your head, hair ablaze in the morning sun like a lit match. And in conversation, in the old, gold frame of a faded painting. That landscape, the little brown stork, those oak trees.The late night of a party and all the warm, glowing bulbs behind his head. You will be reflected in… Continue reading I want you, for the last time
by Nicholas Barnes god, poetry is embarrassing. this electron microscope shows every pore, each curling scar. and jesus, how humiliating. this brittle life of decay. this rhino skin i’m in. i wake in a fevered sweat in the middle of the night. flipping through the waterlogged photo album in my head. the frames are overexposed.… Continue reading typo
by Keathley Pinney Brown At 2:42 am, she crept toward the stumpunder a sky draped heavy with night.The inlet hummed and rippled, the soundof air winging down the mountains, the ocean windfighting its way inland to the marshy dark. To her right, water lapped at the damp shore and sang a seafoam song. Sand fleas slept… Continue reading Changing Shades
by Cedar Clark Content warning: eating disorder Fragments of you,scattered across the plate as if hunger could be foldedinto the corners of your napkin. You carvethe emptiness with a forkfilling the voidwith whispers of control, counting every breathlike a calorie. A cruel illusionof bone and shadows. In the quiet of the kitchen,you measure worthin empty… Continue reading The Disease of Perfectionists
by Margaret E. Gillio I fell in love on a bus ride down the southern coast of Turkey. Steep roads, rickety bus, and views of Mediterranean blue. This memory saves me and your father from suffocation. 2:00am during the pandemic. I lie awake, microwaving peas in my mind. Spaghetti. Fried rice. Meals you and your brother… Continue reading Letter to My Teenage Daughter
by Rigby Martin He smells like Bergamot and honey, especially on his neck where my lips last lingered. When I found him, he smelled like roses and linden with hints of smoke and haze. The scent permeated throughout with the resonance of salt on his sleeves. I thought I saw wildflowers and sage from the… Continue reading Flavors
by Tanisha E. Khan Snapdragons, wild garlic, her loose armshugging closed her cardigans, touringyou around her garden. You visited herfor two weeks each summer. How strange —The Grandmother, by Kayla Czaga (i) toronto your eyelashes catch on jagged edges,around twists of brass flowers caked in dirt—a lock,rusted and half-remembered, with grit in… Continue reading summers with nan
Ignatian Literary Magazine 