University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
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 Samantha Backlund-Clapp Someday I will go to california for real, drown in the chopped lines and party particulars, observe blankly how the rough mountains dance in the ripples of heat, and cook myself dead on the miles of unending american asphalt. I will make my way to the golden state, and I will write… Continue reading Inciting Incidents
by Theo Halladay I showed a photo to my roommates the other day. It was taken two years ago, a full-body portrait of my brother and I dressed in traditional Thai clothing: stiff, mandarin-collared shirts with etched Sanskrit on the buttons, elaborate wrap pants, tall socks. It was my aunt’s wedding, and like any of… Continue reading ฉันรักคุณและฉันขอโทษ
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 Steven O. Young Jr. I can’t remember where I heard it, or how I learned to define the obvious,but my notepad begins in avowal: Philtrum | means love potion | in Greek. I want to claim it came carried in on your lips,a sumptuous goblet brimming with morning glories gathered from the pastel garden planted between your edenic senses, but… Continue reading Greek to Me
by Aidan Cox Turning your head, hair ablaze in the morning sun like a lit match. And in conversation, in the old, gold frame of a faded painting. That landscape, the little brown stork, those oak trees.The late night of a party and all the warm, glowing bulbs behind his head. You will be reflected in… Continue reading I want you, for the last time
by Sarah Bess Jaffe We watched Bin Laden get shot through the window of an Irish pub in Queens. Well, we didn’t see it but, you know. I thought you were such a big deal. We were sunbitten that day. Remember when we liked the guy in charge,in spite of everything? We rode our bikes everywhere,stuck on the BQE’s hot ribbon,for a daylong noon… Continue reading Dive Bars
by Sarah Inouye Content warnings for extended exploration of grief, death, and loss of autonomy. Briefly, disordered weight and body thoughts. What I knew of love, in my final year, coalesced in my green truck. It had been abandoned after the flood that one summer. It was a Californian miracle, both truck and overflow. No… Continue reading The Transfer
by Jessie Jen The itch is somewhere deep inside. I like to imagine it’s a living creature that needs air, that absorbs the oxygen in my blood and releases little burps of gas that drift and drift to just beneath the surface, dotting my fingers with little blister-like bubbles. They ooze clear liquid when I… Continue reading Some Kind of Parasite
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
Ignatian Literary Magazine 