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 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
by Tiffany Aurelia The palm opens—a map of being.Everything has left me except for the humin my chest and we searchfor familiar things. I bring my handscloser, trace each palm lineto the past where an ocean from three summers agopools into the shape we make whenwe carry a weight we cannot keep forever.Somehow, I’ll forever… Continue reading Palm Reading for the Blues
by Zero Ramos Laforga A House in a New Brunswick Reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth by Jim Ross Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans artist, writer, musician, and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently pursuing a BFA in English literature and MAT in urban education and social justice from the… Continue reading is this thing on?
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 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
Ignatian Literary Magazine 