Author: subtextures

I am a poet and a teacher living in central Texas. I attended The University of Texas at Austin, and Middlebury College's Breadloaf School of English.
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which simple metaphor shapes my day (104)

a different time with new shadows

wraps the light in different patterns

more random more abstract less fragile

less likely to crack like a beetle’s

carapace beneath my careless boots


I roam between my vacant days

then disappear easier than I thought

between quick ire and old resentments

like broken branches slip easily

with the river’s froth across smooth rocks


despite all the engrained justifications

despite the comprised and contradictory

narratives despite the feral rage

I am who I am stripped of language

laid down since birth like shrouds

(January 15, 2021)

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Slow Read

A few days ago I read about a thing called a Slow Read. You choose a book of poetry by a single author (I added in not a collected works), then each day you read one poem out of that book several times during the day. The next day you do the same with the next poem in the book, and continue until the book is finished. ( I also added in the further restrictions that it had to be a book I had not read yet, and it had to be by a woman). I am starting today. I am going to slow read the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout.

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shadows near shadows far away (103)

as if trapped in a net of shadow

afternoon light through the window

struggles on the opposite wall 

to form a coherent pattern where

a difference may be discerned

between shadows near and far away


outside the oak and elm stand mute

allowing the air to whisper for them

allowing easy cliches to answer

decades of hardened blood

to answer questions never asked

to form opinions from shadow

as old palimpsests below the scars

re-inscribe the day hour by hour

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Reflection’s Projections

“the other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).”

                        –Roland Barthes

He is no more this, than she

Permits outside the walls

He hides behind. No trope

To be conjured within, she

Vaguely files her nails,

And thinks of him less

Than what to have done

At the spa. He knows

Her as he imagines,

Not as she is told. She

Believes she does not

Change outside herself,

As much as he desires

Her to be more than both.

(June 15, 2017)

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what silence waits to give voice

how much must be

etched across the glass

like ice across the lake

before I can hear

the ravens in the wood

caw out their hunger

before the dark wings’

fluttered descent disguises

the sharp peck and pull

that is my final vision

what silence waits

as an echo’s first reflection

before it wraps itself again

around the trees like snow

(December 24, 2020)

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to divine the past (102)

from any chance moment

wherever you happen to be

like light and dark dancing

across the forest floor

memory without warning

will step out from a phrase

to raise the ancient dead 

the way dust devils 

on cool autumn afternoons 

will twirl lifeless leaves into the air 

like moon-pale bacchants 

arms twisting above their heads

then within your next thought

let fall still trembling to the ground

leaving you ashamed for some act 

of cowardice or petty remorse 

at best remembered less if at all 

and then only as a trace of flame 

flickering shadows upon a wall

(December 21, 2020)