TO-DO LIST
The human being is a series / of tendencies
that need to be overcome / my dead grandmother says
in a dream and I am up / out of bed
overcoming them / the first tendency being the question
who am I? / I am in love with the words who am I
I have failed to overcome whoever this I is
like any good human / like any good human
I must cherish what is outside to change what
is inside the doctors tell me / hello
Dow Jones Industrial Average
I would so like to be you / I can’t stand your
oil / soda cans / running shoes / cell phones
people love your curves / your rumored trickling
rivers / so much bad can happen when you fall
to your knees / hello Prozac bottle
with my name on it / with my doctor’s name on it
I own you and you own me / what a perfect economy
we form / hello Gowanus Canal / your Advil-green hue
looks so sure of itself in the midday sun / hello poems
you are machines / organisms / toothbrushes
cactuses with names like prickly pear and bunny ears
hello poem from the perspective of a cage / you are
what I spend my day perfecting / how can I be cagier
is the question I ask of you / what can I fill
myself with / hello poem about Schopenhauer’s
favorite birds / hello poem from the the perspective
of oxygen / poem from the perspective of
an ant / poem from the perspective of a prescription bottle
what are your last requests / when I walk
outside / so much is happening
I have to open my eyes wider / two geese licking
the muddied feathers of their goslings / a man
facedown on the sidewalk I startle
awake for fear of his death / or maybe mine / a grackle perched
in a plane tree / writing a poem
from the perspective of a human / a poem
that sounds suspiciously like birdsong / a comfort
to the series of tendencies / I slap my name on / and send
down the assembly line towards evening / there is a wedding
in the park today / the flower girl is repeating the words
indian paintbrushes indian paintbrushes indian paintbrushes
testing their sound in her mouth / I want to overcome myself
and marry those words / I want to marry my Prozac / I want
to marry poetry / I want to honeymoon with the Gowanus Canal
I want the Dow Jones Industrial Average weeping at my funeral / my far
far away funeral / but how far is far really / it turns out
my dead grandmother was wrong / the human being
is the tendency / to need to be overcome / so go ahead world
overcome me / indian paintbrushes don’t you like the sound
of my name in your mouth? / whoever I am won’t you please
love for me for who I am?
Matthew Tuckner 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, 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Pleiades, West Branch, Nashville Review, The Missouri Review, Bennington Review, and Split Lip Magazine, among others.
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