The day they ask if you’d ratherbe burned or buried,
the president crasheshis bike into a sand dune.
Sitting in the long waiting roombetween seconds, I notice you,
made god-like by your pain,wrapping the world around your finger,
pushing the cursor forward & back,pausing for glints of detail
in the periphery of the shaky video:the spokes of the wheels drenched
in the reflection of the whitecapsslapping the shore in the distance,
the surprised look of the mancollapsed on his side, useless
as a bouquet of liliessagging next to a hospital bed,
fallen before he ever had the chanceto learn he was falling.
It comforts you, how in a timebefore all this history,
Donald Trump’s cruel and chaotic second term is just getting started. In his first month back in office, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) have proven that nothing is safe from sacrifice at the altar of unchecked power and riches.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
something brutal & long gonelike a sabertooth tiger
is slowly licking its cubinto a deep, peaceful sleep.
Down the hall in the children’s ward,we watch as a little boy draws
thick lines on a toy horsewith a sharpie, inventing the zebra.
Matthew TucknerMatthew Tuckner's debut collection of poems, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2025.