mathew yates
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mathewyates.bsky.social
mathew yates
@mathewyates.bsky.social
2.4K followers 1K following 650 posts
queer poet & painter | from Paducah, KY w roots in MS & Appalachia | in IN | hermit | disabled | cptsd | survivor | fluid | non-binary| trans | they/she/he 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

✍️ in Protean, Malarkey, Ghost City, Stone Circle, & others

mathewyates.com
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mathewyates.bsky.social
not quite done but finished for the night and feel like sharing
November 24, 2025 at 5:30 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
November 19, 2025 at 6:50 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
tonight WIP
stylized woman sitting in corner of room with tea and a laptop and zig zag background with every other line green
November 15, 2025 at 6:24 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.
Guillaume Apollinaire, once accused of stealing the Mona Lisa
October 20, 2025 at 12:13 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
better pic, hard to get a good one with the lighting in my room. not edited, just camera/lighting
better version
October 10, 2025 at 7:22 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
same as previous post but with finer lines and yellow background
October 10, 2025 at 6:20 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
the previous picture painted in with various shades of yellow, gold, into oranges, reds, browns.
October 9, 2025 at 6:12 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
✏️
pencil face portrait on canvas with tight lines emanating from the shoulders and head, stylized hair and eyes, and lines along the face and neck
October 9, 2025 at 3:30 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
trying to get back in the habit of painting, so i made this kinda classic yates-style guy over the last day or two 🧑‍🎨🎨🧡
acrylic painting in vivid colors, a portrait from the upper-chest up against a brown and beige checkerboard pattern. the left shoulder is blue, the right is red, in the middle up the neck is purple, the chin is orange and pink in curves along the chin, into light green lips, dark green mid-face, gold-yellow nose and forehead with a curve of orange at the very top, the left ear is light blue, the right ear purple, the right eye is light blue, the left eye is pink on top and purple below, with red in a triangle between the eye and nose. the right eye is bigger and curves down a little, both eyes pupil-less with orange, brown, white finger-blended irises
October 8, 2025 at 8:03 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
= Mathew Yates when the sky goes twister-green a brick hum the hum of a brick building up against a wind a wind hung up high & let loose like a pendulum the old dog can hear it too a thick hum measurable like color not water not a hum you can hold like the hum of life the thin & hollow hum of life the thin & hollow hum of life which fills right up as easy as it depletes that curls around your heart & shrinks around your feet nor the hum of fate which, as if it matters, sounds exactly like the rain but a thick hum held in the air around the building on the hill behind the trailer which warns the boy & old dog of a storm around the corner an elegy for shelter
May 17, 2025 at 12:46 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
Hugo the cat casting a shadow on red curtains, with a perfect kitty shape, behind our entertainment center where Star Wars vhs are visible, along with NES games and playing cards.
April 22, 2025 at 1:24 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
finished this guy up last night ❤️ 🎨
hard to describe. colorful figure with their left hand on their chin and right arm draped over their head touching their left ear. patterns of lines are on the body and colored brightly, on a background of pinks and golds
March 30, 2025 at 1:52 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
painting of mine from 2023, one of favorites. painted as a gift to a dear friend (who i will send it to one of these days, i swear!)
colorful acrylic painting of a flat portrait of a figure, lines crisscross behind them but some intersect the face, with tin those intersections are unique eyes, noses, faces, with a single angel wing on the right side, brighter, and on the darker left side, about ringed black and green lines, is a golden hand reaching from a black abyss. bright primary colors interspersed with duller earth tones.
March 28, 2025 at 4:07 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
this one came to mind immediately
poster for Mallrats (1995)
March 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
Best Star Trek crew, wrong answers only.
the cast of House, from left to right, Puck from Dead Poet's, lady from HIMYM season something, australian guy who killed dictator, Kal Penn, that actor from House who played Taub, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Wilde, Omar Epps, that lady that Frasier dated that painted and howled and was too good for him!
March 19, 2025 at 5:25 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
a poem of mine from July 2023 via @stonecirclereview.bsky.social, which continuously publishes some of the best poems on the net! always grateful to be featured 💙 #poetry #poem
preoccupations by Mathew Yates haven’t you seen the end times advancing? there’s a storm on Venus, this can’t be good. we are both so broken & so is the Moon, to take the tide out without us in it. have you seen your feed today? it’s so sad. yeah, funny shit. oh, i’m almost done with this season. just ignore what he says for now. worry about shrinks & pills after you’re insured. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. you say you saw an article on how depression is a thing with claws, you say claws aren’t meant for the numb. haven’t you seen the Sun unpossessing dusks & dawns? haven’t you seen her floating off without us?
January 21, 2025 at 10:55 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
been painting some today c:
acrylic painting of a figure in green, blue, and purple, against a background split into quadrants, one apricot, one red, one maroon, one yellowish white
January 19, 2025 at 6:26 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
Post your favorite Star Trek character, wrong answers only.
Roddy McDowall as Cornelius in Planet of the Apes
December 20, 2024 at 8:46 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
✍️ this poem is from spring 2020, published by the always incredible @malarkeybooks.bsky.social #poetry #poem #writing

malarkeybooks.com/poetry/three...
as you wish by Mathew Yates as you wish as you were before any of this i wished the sea were us before any of this i wish there were anything at all to believe in or if anything to stand on or understand as believing is a thing to stand under like a ladder and the luck is a sea were you a sea were any of us here before any of this as you were as you wish
December 6, 2024 at 5:09 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
lol i tried to take a pic where i don’t look at least a little in panic but im in public as a decades-long agoraphobe so it is what it is. its snowing though which i like
selfie of me, wearing a red hoodie and blue shirt, wavy hair poofed out on the side, blue round frame glasses, with a stubble beard
December 2, 2024 at 8:56 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
💛🧡 another poem from my "deluge&debris" manuscript, written by the immortal Mesopotamian Noah figure Utnapishtim from a destitute future. it was published via perhappened mag in 2020 or 2021, i'm not sure if they are defunct or on hiatus #poetry
mathew yates sweet tea in Dilmun written by Utnapištim circa 2056 CE this wet feeling of a world ending held heart to heart to feel no pulse held heart i hold & pump myself it’s so so humid for the drying times sweet tea in Dilmun dreams of ice & breeze i’d hike on up to Hyperborea if i thought i could freeze i’d lift the flood on my back if i thought it could break it this whole thing happens every day i mean it it happens every day & we make it
December 1, 2024 at 7:04 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
my poem "heliotrope" from a few years ago via the now defunct Kissing Dynamite Journal
heliotrope by Mathew Yates is a things with wings always an angel? i have my doubts and none of them are right the way the midday light catches the birch out front and bleaches it whiter than moonsoaked snow is proof enough the sun is god i don't need to be an ant under a lens to understand this all of life is lent and is retaken in a way that even shadows know fate is a thing with a past tense and though the sun feels still in the way we follow it, really it is falling too
December 1, 2024 at 1:35 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
Introduce myself to new followers another way now:
One book 📚
One movie 🎥
One album 💿
One TV show 📺
Notes from Underdog by Dostoevsky O Brother, Where Art Thou? J Dilla - Donuts Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
November 25, 2024 at 12:59 AM
mathewyates.bsky.social
"portrait in repose, in the wild" (2021, 16" x 24")

#art #painting #acrylicart #acrylics #painter #queerart #expressionist
a painting by Mathew Yates of a stylized figure with extra eyes and lips laying in the foreground of hills and trees hugging themself, the ground is purple, the sky is yellow, gold, and white, and the body is those same colors combined with blues from the chest down
November 24, 2024 at 8:13 PM
mathewyates.bsky.social
hugo says his nap needs less light and noise please
hugo, a black male cat with white on his chest and stomach, is sitting in my partner joshua’s lap, josh is wearing red sweatpants. the cat is laying between the legs and has his head burrowed and his forepaws over his head as if to shield from the light as he naps
November 24, 2024 at 1:15 AM