Matt Mullins Poems

What hurts most is not your forgetting
that unforgettable tune,
but the searching, the impossibility,
of actualized need ruining itself
...

How is it that death loves soup
best here in my kitchen, drinking alone
with a pot bubbling on the stove?
...

Twilit silence strung between the spent
light and the darkness gathering
...

I have none to speak of
nor does my father
but my mother's body
is a roadmap of sharp turns
...

Luminous seconds falling before
the alarm that always becomes

The darkness tumbling to an edge set
...

First, you die. Then I choose the place and time
to brush away the dry leaves, rolling aside
the note-heads of pill-bugs and curled centipede clefs
testing the edge of your guitar with the calloused
...

She is twisted around me in the bedroom's green curtained shadow
all is limbs, hair, skin.

There are cars this morning, wheels, as always, sighing on pavement.
...

You are not Lady Godiva looking
through her closet for something
to wear out on the town with your lover
on New Year's Eve, but the daughter
...

Parked in our driveway, home after
spending the evening with good friends
grilling food and drinking beer: I'm staring
through the windshield at our house lit up
...

He counts time to the metronome slashes
of white center-line that refuse to fall into song
as his headlights switch on the amplified eyes
of deer powered up to spring into the full
...