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,
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor 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.