University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
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
by Johnny T. Chaos what else but chaos spinning around my head in the back of the chapel of the school where she pulled me not her first kiss but mine her pulling me alone by the hand my first time holding hands even the soft fingers stuck between mine soft and wet and warm… Continue reading The Creation
In Memory of W.S. Merwin by Trina Gaynon You opened a door to a nightmare. I don't Remember where the walk took me. I cannot tell. Shadows on shadows clouded my vision Of broken lands. Long blue shadows would reign, Made colder by rare blue skies of a belated Spring. Mostly, our sun hides its… Continue reading The Last One
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 Allen Keith The only faces left are on the clock and the shocked sockets of my walls; one staring back from a mirror, dazed, looking a thousand yards deeper than need be. I asked for this, wanted it, fought for it. It takes effort to attain solitude in a city of six million morons.… Continue reading Cheers
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 Travis Stephens She ladles dressing on the salad with a distracted profligacy; it is called Green Goddess, and I drop two cherry tomatoes to the floor. Or are they grape tomatoes? Tiny orbs of seed and acid, like the scrotum of summer, perhaps, or the tiny budding breasts of memory. Or fruit. Not a… Continue reading Pomp & Circumstance
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 Catherine Stansfield I've learned that every day is the day you died each moment, the phone call, empty on my side as a parking lot at dusk, when the sun sets and the masses clear and the deer have already crossed the sea of asphalt in search of green instead of three staring eyes—headlights… Continue reading One Year Later
(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
Ignatian Literary Magazine 