Selby Liebert

Still here.

Posting & poems & submissions (& an upcoming publication).

But I am also moving into a new place. After so long, after divorce, it’s a weirder, heavier, more anxiety inducing lift than moving ever has been.

That is to say expect new things to float out of me when the dust settles.

"What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?" (Snow Patrol)

Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 5: PLANTS AND PARTIES - @willowloom Sunday morning. Barb wakes up at 8:22 AM to grey light and the sound of rain on the roof. She checks her phone. No new messages. The party is still almost...

In the interest of the world turning, despite being a day late,
Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 5: PLANTS AND PARTIES is up.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...

This triggered some deep memories. I grew up in SD and had lots of NE friends and family. The cranes were so present. We always crossed over near North Platte. It’s where I stayed the last time I visited. The nature of home is something miss, even if I don’t care to dwell there any more.

Girmay is probably one of my favorite poets. Just incredible work of the word.

Delighted to have a poem in the TIDAL LIGHT issue of @cosmicdaffodil.bsky.social! 🌊

You can read ‘flying mobula’ below and the rest of the wonderful issue here: static1.squarespace.com/static/62f08...

Hell.

WARMTH IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE In the long white of the frozen north, she names her plushies and rules a tiny kingdom where nothing dies, where winter means you pull the soft things closer. She dreams in rolling green hills and kittens. She names them sweet things, sugar things, tender things that never ask to be held but she holds them anyway.

Keeping it whimsical on this #smallpoemsunday.

Do you need anything else from Beauty I asked. There were so many mothers with their daughters in the TJ Maxx or girls with their friends a toddler trying so hard to see over the counter, crying when he couldn’t

Hardcore This is hardcore because I can still see. I have all my senses, that's you in the large shadow behind me. This is it. The island. The finale. Promise you, I am hardcore. Meet me on the island, I know you're an island too.

Mayfly I live my life a mayfly Who doubtless, from the prudent sky Where passions soar and stories try, Has many tragic words to say But must endeavor On his way Because forever Is just a day.

i have made peace with being the 50 cent in every situation the truth will always come to root even if i'm perpetually too early soon anything we can touch smell feel hear see will be owned by four companies at the most i'm here to hold your hand through this it's going to be ass

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to share small poems you wrote, or ones you love by other poets :)

this week I’d like to share four small poems/snippets from Issue Four of Post-Pop Lit — links & credits follow below~

A Review In this movie, God unzips his trenchcoat to reveal four children stacked one on top of each other. They fall to the ground and break their ribs. The ribs drift slowly into space as the credits roll. Two stars.

One of mine in @bruisermag.com

#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

WARMTH IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE In the long white of the frozen north, she names her plushies and rules a tiny kingdom where nothing dies, where winter means you pull the soft things closer. She dreams in rolling green hills and kittens. She names them sweet things, sugar things, tender things that never ask to be held but she holds them anyway.

Keeping it whimsical on this #smallpoemsunday.

I have been turning to nature for poems again. Because there is still beauty in a landscape. In the lion’s mane and extinction and shale and sphagnum.

If you want to hold on to whimsy, the whole world is waiting, even now.

Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 5: PLANTS AND PARTIES - @willowloom Sunday morning. Barb wakes up at 8:22 AM to grey light and the sound of rain on the roof. She checks her phone. No new messages. The party is still almost...

In the interest of the world turning, despite being a day late,
Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 5: PLANTS AND PARTIES is up.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...

2026 is a humorless bastard. I honestly don’t have words.

I do this anyway?! Just for the string of happy feelings as people wake up and message me back? And because those people are awesome?

Always hilarious when I get a block notification.

Okay. Go be upset by poems and compassion and pretty pictures I guess.

WINGS SOMEHOW SOFTER THAN BREATH The moth has one eye and still finds her. Climbs her sleeve in daylight, like she's the moon, like the pulse in her fingertips is the only warm thing left. And she holds so still, the moth maps her like she has all day. Like time isn't collapsing. The video loops: her wrist turns slowly, so it doesn't have to fly until it's ready.

Another offering of tenderness and wonder for this #smallpoemsunday.

WINGS SOMEHOW SOFTER THAN BREATH The moth has one eye and still finds her. Climbs her sleeve in daylight, like she's the moon, like the pulse in her fingertips is the only warm thing left. And she holds so still, the moth maps her like she has all day. Like time isn't collapsing. The video loops: her wrist turns slowly, so it doesn't have to fly until it's ready.

Another offering of tenderness and wonder for this #smallpoemsunday.

Confronting the suspect, police use lethal force against a disorderly mountain lion trespassing in a private yard.

A bird flew across the border and when it came to rest, was suspected of being an alien and possibly a spy.

We keep heating up, so if we’re about to reach our melting point, this could be the tip of the iceberg that brings us to a boil.

As you have forgotten, so one day might you remember how to be wild and bewildered, to be wilder and be wilderness?

for this #smallpoemsunday, snowy & heavy, I’d like to share these four tanka from Harryette Mullen’s Urban Tumbleweed

This poem has been coursing through my brain all day. You might need it too.

Landscape with a grassy cliff as the ocean stretches toward mountains in the distance.

Close up of soft pink roses.

Bright red dahlia with a yellow center.

Landscape with shades of gold and green in the grasses and trees, and a soft sky that looks like watercolor.

Please sign off if you need to.

Traumatizing yourself is not helpful to you or your community.

But, if you’re going to be here watching the horrors unfold, here is your timeline cleanse.

you cannot reform a bad form. abolition is the only answer

Protester in Minneapolis just before disappearing in gas: "Fuck you! Stop. Damn! I'm 70 years old and I'm fuckin' angry!"

Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 4: COOL - @willowloom Saturday morning. Barb wakes up at 9:15 AM, which is late for her, but she doesn't have work and her body apparently decided sleep was more important than...

New chapter of Barbed Rhubarb is up.

Barb gets coffee and compliments, visits her ex, and actually makes plans for the future.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...

She is the curse that was foretold.

Barbed Rhubarb Chapter 4: COOL - @willowloom Saturday morning. Barb wakes up at 9:15 AM, which is late for her, but she doesn't have work and her body apparently decided sleep was more important than...

New chapter of Barbed Rhubarb is up.

Barb gets coffee and compliments, visits her ex, and actually makes plans for the future.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence.

“Will the heat waves blur me sufficiently?”

New chapter goes up on the 22nd. Catch up this week!

In the Grand Scheme of Things It sounds like someone wound up the wrens and let them go, let them chatter across your lawn like cheap toys, and from here an airplane seems to fly only from one tree to another, barely chalking a line between them. We say the naked eye as if the eye could be clothed, as if it isn't the world that refuses to undress unless we turn our backs. It shows us what it chooses, nothing more, and it's not waxing pastoral. There is too much now at stake. The skeletal rattle you hear at the window could be only the hellion roses in the wind, their thorns etching the glass, but it could be bones. The country we call ours isn't, and it's full of them. Every year you dig that goddamn rose bush from the bed, spoon it from soil like a tumor, and every year it grows back thick and wild. We say in the grand scheme of things as if there were one. We say that's not how the world works as if the world works.

Maggie Smith just stirring souls.
I think about this one a lot.

Weird dreams last night about passing in and out of a parallel reality as part of a job to influence it. Except the reality was calm and peaceful and beautiful. And people from our awful reality wanted to destroy it. What drives us to ruin good things?