University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by L. M. Pino The Woman Without Skin 1. She finds you at a party. The grad student bar is hot and cramped, a pulsing mass of bare arms, thighs, collarbones. She turns among them, green eyes almost glowing, skin reflecting the gold of the lights. You spend the night pretending not to watch her… Continue reading The Woman Without Skin
by Tamara J. Madison for MariOla (“Mama”) who gave us everything she had… Note: Twilight sleep was an amnesic state commonly induced during the early twentieth century by the injection of certain drugs to provide pain relief during and also erase the memory of childbirth. Your breath rushes.Your voice breaks the air. Your body, my… Continue reading Twilight Baby
by Mariya Mykhaylova I took my heart out last nightBound with nerves,Dressed with tears,And served it rare. A new cavity, spacious and emptyMy lungs took up the newfound roomThe heart—you didn’t know what to do—Mostly pushed it around on your plate. You rarely show your soft belly,All of your organs in their rightful place.Suddenly I… Continue reading I Took my Heart Out Last Night
by Madi Giovina after Micheal McCann lying together,bodies loud & mouths quiet,morning becomes night becomes morning again we don't know how much time has passed but the sun has risen & set & risen again & we have risen & set & risen & set & laughed & sweat & laughed & sweat & the shadow… Continue reading orbitals
by John Grey I go to the bookshelf,pull down The Complete Works Of Shakespeare,open it to some random page— King Lear— no, that’s not what I want. Where is All’s Well That Ends Wellwhen you need it?Or Timon Of Athens for that matter.I put it back.I wasn’t in the mood for Elizabethan playwrights anyhow. Why… Continue reading WHILE SHE DOZES OFF AFTER SEX
by Casey McConahay “WHEN AM I GONNA LOSE YOU” - LOCAL NATIVES It was during the pandemic—during the early weeks when everything felt uncertain—and when we sat on your porch together, you told me about the boxes you were disinfecting and about how your sister, who was worried about you, would be upset that we… Continue reading Mixtape
by Cynthia J. Roman Cabrera I wish I understood my mother’s mystery. I feel the sting like a bang on my funny bone when people share positive memories of their mothers. I am envious of people who know their mothers. I know my mother by association. We are kinfolk, but not chosen folk. I would… Continue reading Rootlessness
by Molly Seale The songs I learned first were church songs. The others—Itsy Bitsy Spider, Row, Row Row Your Boat, Happy Wanderer— came later. But the songs I learned from the Methodist Hymnal, before I could even read from the Methodist Hymnal, came to me earlier: another part of learning words and an understanding that… Continue reading Singing With My Father
by Anna Tjeltveit And suddenly we are comforting each other,my hand on your shoulder, yours on my heart,resting in uncertainty. “Your faith is enough,”I say, though now I am an unbeliever.You hold me closer, but silence sits between us still. I believed in you, behind the altar,yours the pulpit, yours the pews. In the children’s homily,… Continue reading My Mother and I Reflect on My Atheism
by Joe Bisicchia We may fear the tired, no longer gold mustard,all the now sky blackened gel of who we werein the dark Whirlpool, old in the shuttered cold.Yes, check our chests to see if we’ve expired. Goodness, is there not a song within our souls?Are we not still same as all who orbit eternity?The… Continue reading Inner Space
Ignatian Literary Magazine 