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,
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
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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.