Matthew Tuckner

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 

Innovations in clock technology

            can be traced back to the need

                        to carve out more time in the day for God.

 

I shake the little crystals in my wristwatch.

            Aerosols dampen the afternoon sunlight,

                        confusing the roosters.

 

Receiving the news of the swollen abdomen,

            the thinning out of the white blood cells,

                        I toss stalks of asparagus into the grass

 

& read the future based on how they land.

            The field gathers around my addition to it.

                        For all I know, the squirrels are cursing at me.

 

Once, we fed ourselves computer duster,

            weeks-old salami, & curdled milk. We invented nouns

                        for the wafts of pink exhaust that rise

 

like thought bubbles from the asphalt plant.

            Our bodies happened to us so fast. The roosters

                        are screaming, believing it's already tomorrow.

 


 

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 

Today, I drank coffee in the shadow

            of the substation & placed a bet on the falcons.

The word ziggurat came to mind.

            The fake memoirs of Emperor Hadrian.

 

When the surgeon called your father’s kidney

            a kidney, the kidney failed.

When I asked you to touch me,

            you zipped past touch to a place

 

where all language can do is crumble

            in the wake of its brutal task.

A windowpane. A face pushed into it.

            The awareness, like a ringing in the ear,

 

that the bluebells outside the window

            are only seldom blue, in a certain light.

Tonight, you said you picture God

            as a man because you miss your father.

 

Tonight, we shared a root beer float,

            & promised we’d never have children,

while the Ford Explorer of clouds

            hovered above, threatening rain.

 

On the way home, I bought

            a family-sized pouch of Tide Pods,

a white noise machine

            that can mimic the sea.

Matthew Tuckner is a writer from New York. He is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at NYU, where he was Poetry Editor of Washington Square Review and taught in the Undergraduate Writing Program. He is the recipient of a University Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the winner of the 2022 Yellowwood Poetry Prize, selected by Paige Lewis. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Pleiades, West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, The Missouri Review, and Bennington Review, among others.