Melissa Anne Tolentino

@sometimesabard.bsky.social

127 Followers 266 Following

she/her | poet-writer-bean | botn nominee | words in Rust & Moth, SoFloPoJo, Beaver Mag, Tinderbox, Emerge (ELJ), + | chapbook Noctua (2023) from Alien Buddha Press đź“ŤDC-ish đź“– matolentino.com

A massive gray long haired cat lying on a white blanket on a blue couch
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.
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.
Black text of a poem on a white background. The poem reads: I'm wrists up on the shore. I'm dizzy riding the waves in your lilac hair. You're tuning the guzheng wrong, but I'll let you—the hours to come will be spent convincing you that birds sing even in the abyss of your wildest parts. Tonight we'll dine by the lake again, a table of gods desperately pretending to be human, being highbrow about things like romance and wisteria. Nature can always be replicated, you say, and we find that to be true in the plains, debating sunrises and sunsets until we are questioning each other's mouths, a bundle of guesswork and heat. How to explain that I could lie in the curvature of your sentences for a millennium? You argued and argued about how music is a science, but you were the taut string shivering under my fingertips. You wrote a whole thesis on the mechanics of song; I had written over and over on the slink of your spine. Too many times I tried to say that this is futile: I am right and always have been. But I would be wrong about everything had you been someone else. In the sea of dust at the end of the world I wanted to be wrong about it all: about how night finally fell on the lake and you were already a star. How I dragged my nails through the remains of the day and wanted to do it all again. To play that song again, whisk the notes through the plains and back again. To admit defeat. To tame those unwieldy birds. The bell tolls now in a secret place, heavy and haunted.