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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Matthew Tuckner

February 21, 2024

Bluesky

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,

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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,

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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.


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