Pasha McGuigan
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Pasha is a fourth year studying English and Cognitive Science. When she’s not scrambling to get her Iris drafts in on time, she enjoys hanging out in coffee shops, digging around in thrift stores, and lifting semi-heavy things at the gym. She loves spending time with her friends, watching good-bad television, and buying her dog too many toys.
It has never been easier to romanticize your life.
I just bought a dining table for my apartment. It is two months into the school year and almost half a year since my lease started. Why the delay?
Like a quarter thrown into a fountain for good luck, the full moon shone bright against the fog-and-cloud marbled October sky.
Clean the cobwebs out of your ears, my dear,
you are putting yourself back together
and I want you to hear me as I say this:
you are ready to step into yourself
Teach me to look in your eyes:
close or wide set. Cold sweat.
A duet. Now do it: all I feel
is tension: the peripheral view:
gravity: veiled exhales: my abdominal
cavity. I used to: avert my eyes
when someone noticed me. Now
it’s long skirts: printed shirts: watch me
I have a confession to make: lately, I’ve been struggling to keep myself together. I miss deadlines, forget to text people back. Turn things in exactly at 11:59pm. Call it the mid-semester reckoning, or midterm season, or simply being burnt out, but I (and I’m sure many of you) do not know how to manage it lately.
Nacho table, extension cords, a locket
lost in the couch. This house crept up
on me like a new year: it was judiciously
January when one day I woke up
to December frosting hello on my window.
When I moved in, after a summer spent inert,
the floor was covered in dead crickets and dirt.
I tear the crinkly green wrapper open as I’m stepping out of the CVS. Hands searching the smooth, plastic exterior for the tiny ribbed circle wheel in the upper right corner. The black and lime disposable camera is so light in my hands, I wonder how it can capture anything at all.
The average color of the universe is cosmic latte—a light beige. Not a dark, swirling black or a brilliant flash of yellow. A warm, boring, in the middle beige. Perfectly suited for Goldilocks.
“There is no springtime on Venus, nor
any other season—no seasons in hell!”
- Allan Treiman
Who named Venus the planet
of love? Yes, it’s bright, blinding
as lust’s hot passion. Year round
the forecast reads a balmy 870
The package was heavier than she expected. She ripped the flimsy duct tape from the seams of the box and pulled out what was inside: a book. Paperback, pages tattered, worn from overuse. The corners of her lips mirrored the curled page corners as she started to smile and hugged the book close to her body.
I dream that a dinosaur walks
into a museum and doesn’t know
it’s him in the middle of the display.
As I tell him, his razortooth-lined jaw
drops in dismay. It’s a mistake,
he roars, a jewel tear rolling
down his face. I take his stubby claw