Celina Quintos

Writer's block tip: if you're dealing with perfectionism, intentionally write something really, really bad. I'm talking like

"P3n1ses are hot.
I haven't seen a p3n1s
in so fucking long."

EVERYTHING you write after will suddenly sound good by comparison and you WILL have a finished piece

To me the Fourth of July is a Fall Out Boy song

Surprised I'm still getting followers even though I haven't been active at all haha. Hello!

The Jupiterian urge to simply let life happen to you

Sometimes I think about how cool I am and wonder why I ever have low self-esteem

A poem on a dark purple background, featuring an image of a skull being ravaged by butterflies. The poem reads: How Dare the Flies Feast i. Whose footprints are these That flatten precious rice stalks? The birds hold their tongues ii. A peal of red rain— Perhaps blood smells of iron For it sins like steel iii. As farmer returns To the soil he once tilled, How dare the flies feast iv. Plates full of next harvest Mouths protest, remembering What last harvest lost v. Smoke rides on new winds The last breath foes will taste At last! There is peace

Breaking my socmed sabbatical for a moment to post a series of "haikus"

My greatest fear is that I will never write another rhyme as good as "when the juridical cage becomes umbilical rage"

The way I make iced tea is to forget I made hot tea

♡

“Writers only know how to return to things, over and over, the sadness, the disappointments, like a dog to vomit.” Estelle Hoy, PISTI 80 RUE DE BELLEVILLE, @after8books.bsky.social

Sunday writing: Stare at one sentence for three hours. Move a comma. Delete it. Whisper "I am God" to your manuscript. Google "Can words smell fear."

so vital to be and do gay, to think and kiss and eat gay, to frolic and skedaddle and ampersand gay, to sit gay and breathe gay

I feel like to make the kind of art I want, I need to be some kind of genius. I'm not a genius, I'm just smart

u gotta compliment ur friends. i understand the impulse to stop urself from being a reply guy, but i promise it's not cringe, commenting on ur friends stuff and giving specific compliments about aspects u liked is the kind of thing that can make a person's whole day

Quintessential Lunar Actions   There was song & there was disappearance.   The hands knew many things or one. All hair was damaged, every tooth sensitive. When has anyone seen a shampoo for hair already   totally healed, a toothpaste for teeth & gums   of unassailable strength? The other day I went walking in my old neighborhood, hoping no one I knew would see me. Secretly hoping my old English teacher would, & say I’d done a good job,   a very good job, even.   But it was past midnight & the middle of July, & who knows where teachers go? I didn’t, despite now being a teacher myself. Perhaps they’d all gone back to their own old neighborhoods.   Everyone has one, even if you’ve lived   in the same spot your whole life. I stood at what was once a decent Au Bon Pain with my supreme shortage of wisdom. I wished many things. I wished I had some leftover taco salad.   My phone rang

or rather, chirped. I fished that tired, tiresome bird out of my pocket. Hello, I said, though perhaps it was hi. Yes? Well, no. No, I don’t need any new or further travel insurance, thank you. I will not now be traveling,   I will be staying put.   It felt almost erotically satisfying to say that. Staying put. I added, & I will be calm, or if not calm, quiet. Just ever so quietly clasping the voice of a pinecone from my local tree, under my local moonlight.   Of course, this was all a fiction.   I would soon be traveling back to where I actually lived, & likely needed insurance, much more insurance, fresher, faster, & of a startling depth like that of a pair of hands suddenly holding my face, big obvious symbol of my life, cupping it   so that I’d shut up, & finally listen.   When was the first time you saw someone look up at the moon as though it could help, as though a look, if sad enough, were enough of a plea?

will i ever stop writing about/to the moon?

not until the moon writes about/back to me! (c’mon, moon!)

🌙

i’ve got 2 new poems in the winter issue of The Poetry Review (@poetrysociety.bsky.social). here’s one of them, “Quintessential Lunar Actions”—

I'm convinced people who say "just read 10 pages a day!" have never actually tried to read a book 10 pages at a time

Screenshot of white text on a gray background that reads: The Stockholm-colored glasses are off. The only pink left in my eyes is the aftermath of last decade’s tears. Or perhaps the flush of this decade’s rage? You were born with the eyes you will die with so why do they change

I hate when past me gives me a bunch of banger lines that present me has no idea what to do with

Why We Have Last Names Spray-paint ADAMon God’s new car.You’re safe.We ain’t gotlast names yet. — Herb Kitson

A new verse from new contributor Herb Kitson:

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗪𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀

Spray-paint ADAM
on God’s new car.
You’re safe.
We ain’t got
last names yet.

— Herb Kitson

a woman says i 'm not an owl Alt: Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series says "I'm not an owl!"

The extent to which people depend on me to be a mediator is RIDICULOUS and some of it needs to STOP

Add neurodivergence and impostor syndrome and it's a recipe for perpetual dissatisfaction

Having multiple creative hobbies is a string of perpetual shoulds

"Oh I should write a poem" "Oh I should write a thinkpiece" "Oh I should make a song" "Oh I should draw"

It doesn't matter how much art you're actually making; you feel like you should be making more of the Other kind

I'm a funny kind of socialist because I think the United States is going to topple as an imperialist power both because of material conflict analysis and because of astrology

WOMEN👏DON'T👏WANT👏CHOCOLATES 👏FOR 👏VALENTINE'S 👏DAY 👏THEY 👏WANT 👏MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S 👏COLLEGIATE 👏DICTIONARY 👏ELEVENTH 👏EDITION 👏

I feel bad unfollowing a lot of poets IT'S NOT YOUR POETRY I'm just Not American and I get way too much American political content for bsky to be enjoyable

Doing a following purge, please don't take it personally! Starter packs just messed up my timeline and I wanna be more intentional with what I see

Yesterday I pulled The Tower and today I saw 999 twice so I guess karma's got one last hurrah before it leaves me alone for the next 28 years

New year, a million old me's Holding space for the multitudes I contain

What happens when last year's you tells you "you are
currently the happiest you've ever been" at a time when you are the most heartbroken you'd ever been?

Read here: open.substack.com/pub/celvasan...

I'm looking through my Substack drafts and sometimes I will surprise myself like damn, I've got some bangers

"Beating a habit isn't erasure, it's editing" I SAID THAT??

That said, I'm planning to revive my Substack! Stay tuned for Thursday, 6:30pm GMT+8 celvasana.substack.com

Saturn has rly been like "Have you learned?" every 7 years and I'll be like yeah I think so! And then it'll give me a test like oops you failed see you again in another 7 years