Beneath the bed, I hide my sack of broken secrets. They leak into my dreams like drops of rain sift slowly through limestone to form deeper pools, darker caves. I wake to put them on again still da…

The Handmaid’s Tale author is joined by Emily Wilson, Ocean Vuong and Booker-shortlisted writer Rebecca Perry in celebrating the newly announced Nobel laureate

“worn out a way of being” —-Jim Harrison 1) Not that they went away, my meds muted most, and slowed the pace to a lachrymose flagellation, from relentless and revisionist jump cuts, reshuffled and …

The moon pulls a bit of infinite dark over her cold pale shoulder.   (October 5, 2018)

You move through mirrors;your reflections’ shards glisten red visions through your eyes.You parse bits of time, andthe air undulates in wavesshredding skin past bone.At aperture’s erasure,a facet f…

Ritualistically like fingers slide along rosary beads,   I worry the minutes, feel the grain of the past,   then shift between decades and days as if idly shuffling   a tarot pack.…

1. Another day breaks; happiness is an old myth. There is no laughter. 2. I wake to the dark, drink black coffee in the dark; today is a day. (October 2, 2019)

https://subtextures.com/2026/10/01/mirror-mirror-2/

In the dream I was Bugs Bunny; but not as smart, nor as funny. (September 30, 2023)

the sadness grew its tendrils through the rooms of their house casually laconically until it touched and troubled their lives staining all in a yellowish brown smudge as if an old mattress tossed t…

Until I can step throughThe hole I leave behind,I scoop handfuls of dustFrom my heart. (September 27, 2017)

“there is no absence that cannot be replaced” —Rene Char this patch of ground where i must mend my old wounds, this is where I stand. Minute by minute, I replace who I was with who I am, then sweep…

The Seine flows endlessly around us. We sit on the tip of the Ile de la Cite as if on a boat’s bow, sailing up the river. The sun shines, like a promise, after days of cold rain. We drink a decent …

advice to my 15-year-old self   Keep writing; it defines you. you are about to meet your wife; she is not your current crush.   Your dad is dying. In a couple of months, he’ll know. It wi…

Bridget Kennedy-Bailey, a lawyer for Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who sits ex officio on the Kennedy Center board, filed a sworn affidavit in court today (PDF) stating that she tried to visit the…

ALT: Chickens Chasing in Dirt Field

Happiness —after Jim Harrison The wine and whiskey, I am certain, do not compliment the anti-depressants, as well as I wish they would; yet, “all this time counting the mind, counting crows”— I pou…

Morning light’s enough, As my students quietly write— How we change our world.   Young trees grow to provide shade, As the old begin to fade.   (September 14,2018)

“but in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself” —Albert Camus Any tremble through the trees contrary to the first wind, the next wind, or no wind: always afraid, so afraid to s…

“when all this driftwood on the heart’s sluggishcoiling currentpiles up.”–Tomas Transtormerlate night early morninglonging for sleepwaking from sleepthe room dark with thoughtthe slow swirldr…

to eviscerate all that could have been and all that there was each day since birth’s cry to worry the wound probing the center as a bee a rose deeper then deeper to pin the skin back exposing the f…

there is no time now I no longer need to be somewhere else but here (September 5, 2023)

The mirror’s a mask for who I think I am; How long have I been gone? Where did I go? The man I see is worn and fragile, skin dry, wrinkled; eyes deep with dark half-moons floating below them like s…

Always nearby, Fear hangs back floating like the hint of smoke on the horizon. The city lies in that direction. Home lies in that direction. We are not going back again. Still, it comes. Its tongue…

“pale light by which it reads itself’            –Michael Palmer, Light Moves 3almost morning almost nightthe cloudy day verges on raini know figures on the wall as walla cuneiform by which i…

On another night years ago, the air, like ash, still warm after the burning day, we lay in the cool grass watching the moon, tangled in the oak trees, coyly slip between trailing clouds. We were …

Posts about poetry written by subtextures

We sit in a dark room in an old hotel. Electricity still flickers and water still spurts, but only sporadically. Everyone keeps to their rooms. It is safer not to know, less arguments that way. If …

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I should go, but I don’t. The silence is too loud to mask my good-byes. I pour more whisky, swirl the ice idly, then swallow it. Of course, you arrive late, in a flurry of hugs. “I’m surprised you’…