When the World Will End
Michael Meyerhofer

Not while you’re warming your porch swing
with Dostoyevsky and a good merlot—nor will it end
while you pantomiming a linchpin with someone
whose name brain damage couldn’t erase,
the bedroom curtains trammeling like a ribcage.

It will not happen in winter, it will not happen
after some hard-won breakthrough with
your therapist, your parents, your publisher.
Nor will it end when the moon cocks its eyebrows
and cherry blossoms carpet-bomb D.C.

No, it will happen during your colonoscopy.
It will happen while you’re waiting in line
for a roller coaster, for the restrooms at Wrigley Field.
It will happen just as you catch yourself eyeing
someone a bit too young, too old, too blood-related.

It will happen as you’re driving past a billboard
for the Boy Scouts—Be prepared—then a beggar hoisting
pleas in rain-proof Sharpie. He tries to catch you
with eyes like wet agates, but you look away.
You pretend you dropped something. You reach.

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