University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
by Aria Shum all those years you spent watching your life pass by from the attic, wondering when it would start breathing again. When it would start wanting again. If happiness would show up at the door like it used to, perhaps disguised in a hat or a coat or the face of somebody you used to know. In a dream, you wake up… Continue reading THE WAITING &
by Mary McColley Content warning for war. God do you know I wrote you prayers on the backs of maple leaves, stared wide-eyed at the stars I said scattered from your palm, sifted through the prints of your fingers, God do you know I loved you God do you know how Hind whimpered as 335… Continue reading LORD, I THOUGHT YOU HUNG THE MOON
by Matt A. Hanson from a dimming bow the high bright clouds cumulate / shades of light orange descending / gray blues / mountains faded against sharp stone bare seafront foundations giving way to the dark green / dusk-lit forests as still as the mast of a lone sailboat / white in the distance, surrounded … Continue reading Blue Voyage II
by Ingrid Marie Jensen ‘Where’ve you been all my life?’ Jack Harris asks with a crooked smile, both incandescent and terrifying, that’s real charm along with eyes like Lake Michigan in a storm and an expensive suit. he’s somebody special and don’t he know it! song slides off slick vinyl, filling the air like a… Continue reading Billie, 1933
by Dahlia R. Trigger Warning: Alcoholism/Emotional Neglect Head pounding and bones aching beneath those bamboo sheets— just a sip would turn the throbbing into a dull ache, but the shelf was right by your room. By that hallway and that photo of me holding you on our stone steps at 5 pounds and 2 ounces— … Continue reading Erysichthon
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 Zach Murphy Stewart came from a town where the water was abundant but never clean. Lillian came from a town where there wasn’t enough water to keep the wildfires at bay. Every Sunday morning they’d meet at a lone, wooden bench by the secluded pond at St. Catherine Trail. In the middle of the… Continue reading The Mallards of St. Catherine
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 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
Ignatian Literary Magazine 