{"id":2404,"date":"2024-07-04T18:52:22","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T23:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2024-08-05T12:01:33","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T17:01:33","slug":"poetry-by-matthew-tuckner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=2404","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Matthew Tuckner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p>There was always something\u2014<em>goose<\/em>, <em>snow<\/em>, <em>bomb<\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n<p>falling in factions from the patchwork sky.<\/p>\n<p>Feelings of grief were shared in the healing circle.<\/p>\n<p>We lost sixteen species of tanager,<\/p>\n<p>a deckle-edged copy of <em>Measure for Measure<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Riding our gondolas to the aneurysmal altitudes<\/p>\n<p>of ice-mantled cliffsides, tracking<\/p>\n<p>the growth of our terrariums<\/p>\n<p>squirming with blister beetles, we smelled<\/p>\n<p>our funny smells, &amp; drank our banana slushies,<\/p>\n<p>half-laughing, half-crying, as the casket-lift<\/p>\n<p>lowered the last of our caskets into the earth.<\/p>\n<p>We didn\u2019t know how much we would miss us.<\/p>\n<p>To soothe us, the mannequin we called mother<\/p>\n<p>bought us a stuffed, baby mammoth.<\/p>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Matthew Tuckner received his MFA in Creative Writing at NYU and is currently a PhD candidate in English\/Creative Writing at University of Utah. His debut collection of poems, <em>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. His chapbook, <em>Extinction Studies<\/em>, is the winner of 2023 Sixth Finch Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in <em>AGNI, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, The Adroit Journal<\/em>, and <em>Best New Poets 2023<\/em>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Insta and X: @Tuckner_Matthew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We didn&#8217;t know how much we would miss us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,98],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}