The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

By MATTHEW TUCKNER

                                          Rome, New York
                                          after Austin Araujo

In my favorite picture of you, the hair blown across
your face, obscuring your face, it’s easy to make out,
deep in the distance, the hangers of the air force base
classified as a superfund site, a sprawling huddle
of buildings expanding out into the extent of the valley.
Volatile organic compounds, the report says. Solvents
poured into the aquifer. Hair blown across your face,
obscuring your face, & beyond it, a tree, its leaves
swept in a single direction, further evidence for the wind
that once carried into the rolling green hills the ash
& wreckage of the failed fighter jet tests run by
the bombardment wing. A wind, untranslatable into image,
except for its consequence. A face, erased, blotted out
by the hair that I would part, if the moment wasn’t gone.
Out of sight, like the discarded munitions lining the three
identical landfills the picture lacks the dimensions to contain,
covered, as they are, by sheets of concrete, your face
no longer a face but an artifact hiding what’s hidden.
The film forming foam, the layers of lead-based fuels
that seeped for years into the water wells, now dormant,
frozen in time the moment I cracked open the aperture
of the lens, flooding it with color, overexposing the image
until everything in my sight was obscured by light.

 

Matthew Tuckner received his MFA in creative writing at NYU and is currently a PhD student in English / creative writing at the University of Utah. His debut collection of poems, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is forthcoming from Four Way Books.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.] 

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Related Posts

Long wooden table with chairs. Plants in the background.

Four Ways of Setting the Table

CLARA CHIU
We are holding the edges of the fabric, / throwing the center into the air. / & even in dusk this cloth / billowing over our heads / makes a souvenir of home: / mother & child in snowglobe. / Yet we are warm here, beneath / this dome, & what light slips through / drapes the dining room white.

Contrail across blue sky

July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors

GEOFFREY BROCK
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers

Fenway Park

Before They Traded Devers

AIDAN COOPER
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase