Maggie Pahos is a junior at Elon University, in Elon, N.C., where she is studying creative writing, art history and African/African-American studies. Her hometown is Clarendon Hills, Ill., where she lives with her parents, Lauren and Steve, her younger sister, Lainie, her younger brother, Willie, and her two puppies, Griffey and Noah.
 

In her free time, Pahos enjoys spending time with her grandparents, Sarasota residents Nikki and Jim Nilon, traveling, reading, making homemade cards and updating her academic blog, perceivethis.wordpress.com. Check out Pahos’ latest poem, “Metamorphosis,” (below) and see her Longboat Key nature photos on yourobserver.com.

Metamorphosis

I spend my nights re-typing the poems of famous poets.

Taking syntax and sonnet to try on as a red, woolen peacoat
or clumsy bifocals. Like the little girl doing crossword puzzles
at a wooden table nearby. Tracing with her pencil the outline of
tiny letter squares as though she came up with hints like
“Fruit of 613 seeds” or “Londoner, for short.”

Whoever spent an afternoon, a long winter, a decade —
devising contraptions and axioms, stringing together words
like magnetic toy trains — will be visited by
the ink-pawed cat who never dies and always leaves a trail
of Hebrew letters behind her. Aleph. Bet. Sometimes a gimel
when her milk tastes right. I clack at my keyboard
and pretend these words, transparent
and surprisingly rude, are growing limbs for the first time.

Wheat dough rises in the sun and forms cracks, pockets of air.

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