Short Talk on the End of the World
after Anne Carson
Before the sun collapses in on itself, it is going to expand, push its round yellow belly out until it swallows earth, its hot yellow tongue folding us in. Before that, everything will have gone to hell. Each road lined with blackened trunks of oak and maple like streetlights. But now, the sun has snuck through my blinds and is lying here across my lap, and after five months of cold nights, all I want is to lie in the grass, let its danger beat on me, saying have me, have me.
-Lia Greenwell
Lia Greenwell is a senior in English and Arts & Humanities at MSU, where she works at the RCAH Center for Poetry and MSU’s Student Organic Farm. After graduation, she will attend the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
I loved the economy of this poem, the way each word is as expensive as the others. No cheap give away words thrown in. The poem brings you in, makes you feel the sun on your skin and feel the anticipation of the danger.