Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
A Hundred Words, poem by Eugen Bacon.
A Hundred Words
Her world is ending. She feels her body eat itself. Her life is a code she can’t read.
It’s a menace. It runs like a dog, the direction unclear. If only she could catch
glimpse of a sign listing destination right here: bright-eyed planet. But nothing is
bright-eyed about Earth. She’s spinning in lava that’s a calamity of failed loves.
If only she could die in peace.
But she worries if she’s damned to eternity in a museum of apocalypses,
dioramas of flood, earthquakes, heatwaves, pandemics, hate, intolerance, poverty,
misjudgements and bushfires.
Here’s a selfie with the angels of death.
© Eugen Bacon
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick Award, and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’.
Visit her at https://eugenbacon.com/blog/