Melissa Anne Tolentino
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sometimesabard.bsky.social
Melissa Anne Tolentino
@sometimesabard.bsky.social
120 followers 260 following 24 posts
she/her | poet-writer-bean | botn nominee | words in Rust & Moth, SoFloPoJo, Beaver Mag, Tinderbox, Emerge (ELJ), + | chapbook Noctua (2023) from Alien Buddha Press

📍DC-ish

📖 matolentino.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
tacobellquarterly.org
I hate writing and myself. It's great, really.
July 26, 2025 at 11:07 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
It’s live!!! 🥰 yes it’s another dnd poem leave me alone lmao a millennial has to find joy somewhere
July 23, 2025 at 5:27 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
I’m in this issue, #25 from @smallwondersmag.com woohooooo! It’s my first publication in a spec fic journal - hopefully the first of many 🥰 please snag a copy of the ebook if you can!
smallwondersmag.com Small Wonders @smallwondersmag.com · Jul 2
Issue 25 is out to subscribers and will be on our website in the coming weeks. You can get the ebook right now from our store! And check out the sweet cover, with art by Katherine Souza. store.smallwondersmag.com/buy/db4d11b2...
Cover for Small Wonders Issue 25. A person rides a two-legged feathered dinosaur. In the distance, a vertical series of pyramids hovers over each other, a bright red beam spearing the center of them. Authors are Bernie Jean Schibeling, Courtney Floyd, KL Mill, Stephen James, Adams Yahuza Abdullahi, H Puyeo, Janna Miller, Melissa Anne Tolentino, and Dawn Vogel. Cover art is by Katherine Souza.
July 3, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
charliejane.bsky.social
If you love speculative fiction, then you owe a huge debt to @strangehorizons.bsky.social -- a magazine that successfully brought SFF short fiction online and expanded our ideas of what genre can do. It launched my career and many others. And it's still amazing.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...
Strange Horizons 2026
A free weekly speculative fiction magazine with a global perspective.
www.kickstarter.com
June 15, 2025 at 7:48 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
May 3, 2025 at 5:02 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
I usually love looking out at the Potomac when driving into DC but today was different.
January 30, 2025 at 3:18 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
Looking for: an indie press to submit a poetry microchap (10 poems at its current version but could be 11-12 if that’s the min) - genre is speculative/fantasy. I’ve done some research into spec presses but much of it is fiction or fuller length collections. Would love to hear your recs ❤️
January 23, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
toddedillard.bsky.social
every day I have to remind myself there's only so much astonishment I have each day and I cannot spend it all on The Horrors
January 21, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
josephbrassey.bsky.social
I really want more writers to embrace “I don’t know.” You don’t have to know how all of your mythology perfectly fits. You don’t need to know how the magic works or how the lore all connects.

Sometimes fantasy stories are just isolated little fables, best understood by the heart, not the head.
January 18, 2025 at 1:53 AM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
A rejection after waiting months. le sigh 😔
January 16, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
chenchenwrites.bsky.social
a poem should be at least as good as a ham & cheese sandwich
January 2, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
dekubrush.bsky.social
Dec 31st Dec 31st
2016 2024
January 1, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
mel.bzky.team
the reason an MFA doesnt improve your writing is because it cant instill in you the single most important quality for a good writer to have: being an absolute weirdo who really wants to make people understand the perverse undulations of their gremlin brain
December 30, 2024 at 8:56 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
someone mentioned this is the last caturday of 2024 so
A massive gray long haired cat lying on a white blanket on a blue couch A tuxedo cat on a blue blanket with white daisies stretching
December 29, 2024 at 4:48 AM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
well brb im cryin

tlth.co.uk/dearemerging...
Dear emerging, pre-emerging & post-emerging poets, — TL/TH
tlth.co.uk
December 29, 2024 at 12:35 AM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
I’ve said it once about fanfic schoolwork grant apps emails poems etc etc etc and I’ll say it again: when will the writing spring fully formed from my forehead onto the screen??????? Idc about jet packs that’s what I want from science
December 17, 2024 at 11:12 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
angelaliu.bsky.social
My new flash story, “Sailor Moon Is Tired Of Fighting Evil” is out today at @hexliterary.bsky.social!

It's under 500 words and is for anyone who's ever wondered what it's really like to fight evil by moonlight.
hexliterary.bsky.social hex @hexliterary.bsky.social · Dec 17
"Sailor Moon doesn’t need a magical wand or an idiot with roses."

We are BEYOND thrilled to share a new @angelaliu.bsky.social story with you this week, featuring a familiar 90s icon searching for change in her life! The prose in this one is so sharp! Hit it!👇🌙
Sailor Moon Is Tired of Fighting Evil by Angela Liu
Sailor Moon doesn’t need a magical wand or an idiot with roses. The ghouls that chase her are already a dying species—outdated, second class to the real monsters shouting on the TV. She rides the trai...
hexliterary.com
December 17, 2024 at 6:33 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
now this is the kind of sky I’m talking about in that one poem about sunsets 😮‍💨
capitalweather.bsky.social Capital Weather Gang @capitalweather.bsky.social · Dec 7
It was an amazing sunset tonight!!! We're about to retweet a bunch you all shared but we'll lead it off with this gem from CWG's Kevin Ambrose.

You can catch our evening forecast update and some more sunset pics at this link: www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024...
December 7, 2024 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
thrillhousegaming.bsky.social
Square Enix has just released a playlist on Spotify/Apple with every song from every Final Fantasy I-XVI.

2,892 songs. 1,425 hours.

open.spotify.com/playlist/3hF...
Final Fantasy I-XVI original soundtrack
December 6, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
toddedillard.bsky.social
when someone says they like my poem
painting of a black frazzled cat with the caption: "Unusually repulsive cat startled by a gesture of affection:
December 3, 2024 at 3:27 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
I don’t usually read books on craft but I learn best through actual examples vs just reading about concepts (bc that is so boring) and this is chock full of em. Also really fun if your favorite part of English class was ripping pieces apart for analysis
A hand of olive complexion holding a paperback book with a white cover titled “Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetey Forensically” by Paisley Rekdal. The hand and book rest on a light linen bedspread. In the background sits a tuxedo cat and a dresser.
December 2, 2024 at 4:47 AM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
angelaliu.bsky.social
“anything worth doing is worth doing badly”

The ending of this poem brings me to tears every time.
Falling and Flying By Jack Gilbert Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.
November 24, 2024 at 6:27 PM
sometimesabard.bsky.social
Had a poem come out today in BRAWL Lit (+ an interview) 🌅

This was such a dream - Martheaus and @taylorfthiel.bsky.social are putting some stellar work into the world and they give the BEST feedback.

anyway here’s my poem, I’m 33 and the sky makes me cry!!

www.brawllit.com/2024/melissa...
Green text on beige background. asking millennials why we’re so obsessed with sunsets because what is as striking as the end of the day? because we can’t resist a giant neon sign. because it’s nice to know someone could be held that high so low. because maybe that’s where the pot of gold is. because our swords have tarnished and we want something beautiful to look at. because we love a good pink and our turnout for the barbie movie was proof. because we love a good orange, the memory of a sunkist burning its way down our throats tasting like the summer of ’96—knees asphalt-kissed leggings teal with zigzags my freedom as long as the horizon when it bleeds. because we’re grown and we’re not afraid to cry. because for some reason we always need some kind of nature-related excuse to cry. because the sun says I’ll be here tomorrow and means it and we love that for her and we need that for us. Green text on beige background. because the way that clementine sugar light holds me is more sacred than anyone could ever understand. because our tangerine crayon nubs are all her fault. because when I was seven I had a windbreaker that was the same electric purple-pink. because it was supposed to protect me. because she glows and so did I once. because she won’t tell anyone I’ve been crying. because this is another kind of prayer. because I want to go back to her, that blunt-banged brown baby girl, seven years old and skinned knees, and tell her the one thing that never changes is the sky.
November 20, 2024 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
kelliagodon.bsky.social
"Someone said/winter has broken windows...Today my heart wears you like curtains."

Today's autumn poem... any other favorites? Feel free to add them to this thread.
November 16, 2024 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Melissa Anne Tolentino
scrizzlee.bsky.social
“You came across my skyline” sound like some romantic shit lmao
November 15, 2024 at 11:34 AM