University of San Francisco's Student-Run Literary Magazine
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 Stone Mims To Mwila, C.T, N.R. and other Black students: As you walk across the stage on this mild, Michigan afternoon, I feel an immense pride; I feel an immense sadness. This double consciousness results from the complicated situation of your coming of age. On one hand, as I look into your bright, young… Continue reading A Letter to My Students
by Jennifer Fischer Content warning: references to mass gun violence and the accidental death of a child. Kate made her way to Tommy’s bathroom instead of her own. She sat on the toilet and stared at the white shower curtain with a large T-Rex vomiting out a rainbow on it. Her heart raced, but she… Continue reading Tommy’s Dragon
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
Ignatian Literary Magazine 