University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by JC Alfier From the river that received his ashes like alms,my father stands at his workbench, tinkers in the service of the lesser angels now,heaven acceding his need for a 40-watt bulb cornered away from the radiant surge of Shekinah glory.Departed souls about him will get used to the dimness, study him putzing about… Continue reading Tradesman
by Mallory Rader For Sabrina I drop your daughter onto her bed with a plunk. You are a daughter. I am a daughter. We joke about being each other’s mother. She wants to be a baby again. I touch something mythological in the air. Your toddler clenches her eyes shut, puts a thumb in her… Continue reading For Sabrina, For Riley
by Tohm Bakelas you thought summer might not end this year, that autumn had no chance, but then without warning the temperature dropped, and it seemed as if overnight leaves changed from green to yellow, from yellow to red, from red to purple, from purple to black. all those faded lemonade sunsets you chased no… Continue reading the same situation
by Mary P. Chatfield Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mansfield, I am writing to thank you when I want to be writing a poem for your generous gift to our year-end appeal. my appeal is always for a poem about how the streetlight turns the snow the color of lemon sherbet, how the geese honk and… Continue reading Charity Case
by Siavash Saadlou My cousin Meysam says that my father wasn’t exactly made for war. “He would get misty-eyed,” he says, “as soon as you read him a poem.” My eyes glaze over a photo of Mahmoud with regret as I hear These words—in the photo he is standing on a rooftop in his Uniform,… Continue reading Words and Lives
by Chisom Okorafor Brown is the color of flesh, I say, And everyone nods. That makes sense, After all, your flesh is brown. And other have different colors. But that's not what I meant. I know flesh exists in other colors. Yet brown is the color of flesh. Flesh is meaty and fatty and sweaty,… Continue reading Brown Flesh
for Chole Kerney by Daniel Barry i remember a runny nose, texting my roommates i’d be leaving and trading them for a suitcase with wheels. i folded all my socks and felt the loneliness, the quiet, the misery of feeling i was the only one in this lone room world. dad tried to book a… Continue reading Scaling My Mind and a Sickness
by Sam Moe 1. Two places I can’t trust you with my heart: here, between wet cove rocks, you’re working through the idea of strelitzia reginae in the afternoon, I’m distracted by flower, leaf, low reef, the spindlebeak is blue and between the two of us I think we could outlast the storm. Will you… Continue reading Reckless Compression
by Alex Starr Time has not even started to take the sky through gradient from absence to navy blue to cobalt already slapped together cars puttering along or behind motorcycles with women sitting both legs on one side as in effigy or remembrance of more than one past century of echelons leaving puffs of smog… Continue reading Rush Hour in the Persistence of Memory
for Philip Levine by Stephen Barile His name is sewn in script On the oval patch over his left breast, Lemon. The shirt-pocket bulges With something kept hidden. Machine oil stains his coveralls. Under a cap, with a metal-buckle, He smiles with very tapered lips That grip his bulging cheeks. Reflecting the sun from a… Continue reading LEMON
Ignatian Literary Magazine 