Matt Mullins

Well Water

It was a wit's end type of situation. He showed
up at the end of August with his front-porch-

sweeping wife and a divining rod in a hard-
shell case. "Here today, up to Buckeye next

week. Goin' all over, been all over."
He was a last resort.


Conciliatory

The train
exclaims on
television
throughout the house.

Pictures of smokestacks
brush their way
across the inland
prairie between the
front bedroom and
the office.

A house divided
against itself cannot
support the weight of
a multi-ton
locomotive hulk.

Bringing two houses
under one roof is a
lackluster task
better left to those with
a conciliatory nature

Above all, the black
clouds of mineral
exhaust sink back
to the earth
exhausted.

The sun sends
its luminary
emissaries through
slate cumulus,
steel-hammer drunk
and unable to navigate
such treacherous
conditions.

Matt Mullins was born in Louisville, KY and is completing his graduate degree at North Carolina State University. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review.