University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by Colin Keating 1 I’m in imminent danger of getting Way Too Psyched. I’ll try to end this song sweetly but no promises. My back hurts and my neck is a cubicle. The airtight compartment of my life is collapsing into a traffic cone, a backwash attendant, your own megaphone… But! All my fucking quilting… Continue reading Let’s Get a Party Started (I’m Fucking Serious)
by Trisha Chen i tuck myself into a quiet-corner cookie cutter shape of a person, i ignore the bumps, the creaks, the peaks, the valleys, i shine a flashlight at my own pupils in the mirror hoping to see into the dark pitfall, i feel saltwater pushing at my waterline dam. i push against the… Continue reading bitter and better are one vowel apart
by Charles Kell There were beads in the trees, hair & water mixing in a torn reflection. New Orleans, drunk on hurricanes & thinking of Li Po: The birds are gone / and people are few! Days were sweltering— I watched for a long time a rusty trumpet float on Pontchartrain. Nights were cooler. I… Continue reading Book of Windows
by Deirdre Hickey When I was only eleven you called me Aphrodite, sticking your finger into my hips, when my body first began to look a little more like yours. Already you told me I had what you wanted, a body ripe like a hummingbird, smooth fruit of sliced peach, bones dripping with sweet wine,… Continue reading They Long to Be (Close to You)
by Steven O. Young Jr. I thought up a story for you. Honest! And it’s not that I can’t remember what it is, though I’m racking my brain, rummaging around these russet roots as if it somehow seeped through my scalp, putting on a good show. It’s simple and straightforward. Too simple and straightforward. It’s… Continue reading Storytelling
by Jim Ross To fend off doers of foul deeds I keep my bedroom door securely locked. The only one I cannot keep away is Death. Death carries a skeleton key good for every door. Tonight, he comes, inserts his key into the cylinder, and turns. The ancient lock rattles as cylinders grind and bolts… Continue reading Night Watch
by Mary P. Chatfield Translation is always about loss as if you were looking through a glass the sight plain enough the tang and the touch missing the skull beneath the word’s skin. Catullus knew this when he described how the great gods came to the wedding feast bearing whole meadows of flowers whole forests… Continue reading Wrestling with Catullus XIV
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
