Selby Liebert
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sqliebert.bsky.social
Selby Liebert
@sqliebert.bsky.social
510 followers 810 following 990 posts
Writer of words, coparent of two humans, feeder of three cats.

Trans 🏳️‍⚧️
she/her, per/pers, they/them

willowloom.online
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sqliebert.bsky.social
Selby Liebert @sqliebert.bsky.social · May 20
Hello!

I’m a trans, disabled writer/photographer/music nerd.

I love poetry (but am currently focused on a magic horror novella).

Flowers are my favorite things. I shoot a mix of film (Yashica-A) & digital (Olympus PEN E-PL1).

I play piano, and experiment with composition & electronic music.
Martha hears voices coming from the moon. Very quietly, like echoes of flowers stretching over the lawn. She wonders why the world has stopped crying and she hasn't. She tries understanding how death is a silent event. Softly holds palms of earth in her upturned hands. What a terrible thing to be buried in. It looks like grass and feels like childhood. Play-Doh, she remembers. She used to believe her mother was a prophet. Always whispering. Martha is made of words she will never speak aloud. The more she learns about the human heart, the more she believes it is a bomb. Martha wonders if she needs to sell her soul, and how one goes about doing that. Close photograph of a hellebore bloom. A bright purple flower filled with radiating bright yellow anther. More flowers and dark greenery are blurred in the background.
Reposted by Selby Liebert
sqliebert.bsky.social
Have a little Christmas prequel from the world of Barbed Rhubarb.

Wherein we meet some important folks, have brunch, and watch It's A Wonderful Life.

Fair warning: it's sad.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...
Barbed Rhubarb: Last Christmas - @willowloom
The cinnamon rolls take three hours to make and turn out almost perfect, which is better than Barb usually does baking. It is 10:47 AM on Christmas morning...
willowloom.online
December 25, 2025 at 9:42 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Quote this with what you have accomplished in 2025 no matter how small.

✨ Started HRT
✨ Made some new, true friends
✨ Finished a novel and got through the first round of edits
✨ Finalized divorce
✨ Reclaimed some old writing
✨ Survived
londonpriceauthor.bsky.social London Price, author 🌈 @londonpriceauthor.bsky.social · 9h
Quote this with what you have accomplished in 2025 no matter how small

🪿 Wrote a novella for my first queer anthology
🪿 Took care of my wife through surgery
🪿 Burned out hard, but didn't burn down my business like I was tempted to
🪿 Joined the citizen advisory board at the library
🪿 Survived
kilagreene.bsky.social Duchess of Doom @kilagreene.bsky.social · 11h
Quote this with what you have accomplished in 2025 no matter how small

💟 Wrote a few things
💟 Read a lot of books
💟 Acquired more cats (not on purpose)
💟 Took up knitting again
💟 Saw a doctor & got meds for my migraines
💟 SURVIVED
December 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
jayeallisonashtear.bsky.social
Final Fantsy hot take;

the remake of 3 works much better, narratively and conceptually, if you see the four characters not as three guys and a girl, but as just four different types of lesbians.
December 25, 2025 at 11:08 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Have a little Christmas prequel from the world of Barbed Rhubarb.

Wherein we meet some important folks, have brunch, and watch It's A Wonderful Life.

Fair warning: it's sad.

willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...
Barbed Rhubarb: Last Christmas - @willowloom
The cinnamon rolls take three hours to make and turn out almost perfect, which is better than Barb usually does baking. It is 10:47 AM on Christmas morning...
willowloom.online
December 25, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
the-engine-idling.bsky.social
Issue 8 is OPEN FOR SUBS!

But what's the deal with rights?

Mind the Off Limits List: buff.ly/xboarlD

Rules: buff.ly/W6Q0BoP

#writingcommunity #artistcommunity #collage #art #indiepublishing #indielit #litmag #poetry #poetrycommunity #writingprompt
December 21, 2025 at 7:55 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
For this #smallpoemsunday,
one from me
+ a section of
Transtömer’s “Streets in Shanghai”
translated by Patty Crane.
SONGS You test the firmness of your voice in the shower where running water can drown you out, where, wet, you can pretend you're not really a house fire waiting for a match. Through the wall, your neighbor practices violin, the same four bars of something almost beautiful. You lie there counting the mistakes, each one bringing her closer to the end. Outside, someone's car alarm performs an aria of panic and you think: yes, exactly, sing it. At dawn the trampling hordes set our quiet planet in motion. We're all aboard the street, and it's as crammed as the deck of a ferry. Where are we headed? Are there enough teacups? We should consider ourselves lucky to have made it aboard this street! It's a thousand years before the birth of claustrophobia. Hovering behind each of us who walks here is a cross that wants to catch up with us, pass us, unite with us. Something that wants to sneak up on us from behind, put its hands over our eyes and whisper "Guess who!" We look almost happy out in the sun, while we bleed to death from wounds we don't know about.
December 21, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
sqliebert.bsky.social
Going to keep being insufferable about my little plant lady.
December 18, 2025 at 4:06 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
“I test the thickness of the universe, its resilience
to carry us further than any of us wish to go.
We shed our shapes slowly like moving water,
which ends up as it will so utterly far from home.”

From “Cabbage” by Jim Harrison
achillesthe2nd.bsky.social Achilles Micawber @achillesthe2nd.bsky.social · 21d
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 18, 2025 at 10:11 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Going to keep being insufferable about my little plant lady.
December 18, 2025 at 4:06 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
A brief little introduction to Barbed Rhubarb before I start posting weekly in January.
willowloom.online/barbed-rhuba...
Barbed Rhubarb: A Moodboard - @willowloom
​Barb lives in Portland. This is mainly because I also kind of live in/near/around Portland. Barb is not me. I am not Barb. This is Portland.  Barb does not...
willowloom.online
December 18, 2025 at 2:23 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Working on a mood board type post about this. But first I’m going to have some garlic and ginger hot wings.
December 17, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
leftistlawyer.com
TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.

We're not cosplaying. We're not pretending. We just...are women.
December 17, 2025 at 4:16 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
The Aspen Path, from The Cloud Path
by Melissa Kwasny
#twopageplustuesday
THE ASPEN PATH The aspen leaves have fledged and so are distant, having traveled into their exterior summer lives, preoccupied now with living, not dreaming. A loss of intimate relation. Though breezes move toward me with softer hands. Why can't I approach my own growth with such undivided intentions? Without new teachers, I revisit the rituals, a star I make room for in a small asymmetrical window, pussy willow soaking its roots in an earthenware cup. The phases come. The trunks are timeless. As if the moon were shining on them through the day. All light enters us without permission. The logic is unanswerable: aging is the body's crime. I stand under trees as if under their influence. Water everywhere to read this season. See, it has swallowed the highest stone. The rainbow-lipped branches in the gradual thaumaturgy of spring rain— we each have an instrument. It wakes the younger ones first, the rest reluctant to start again with tarnished horns. Aging: my solstice, I didn't notice the turn. Was the dawn different when I was seven years old than it will be when I am seventy? As if sisters. As if one of them is gone. Sixty hours before the asteroid hit, they say, it appeared like a star, swimming ever faster toward us. Ninety-nine percent of life died. Seventy-five percent of species went extinct. Mammals, even plants, must have felt uneasy. If there is such a story, larger than our memories of earth, there must be an equally large story of what is not life. If there is a process or do all processes stop. It is difficult to imagine us in the past— maybe why my grandmother's eyes were always watering. A friend said she gets more beautiful all the time about his friend who is dead. As she passes, does she shed her deterioration? Just as I wanted to bring an aspen into my room, to duplicate it in paint, nothing common left for very long.
December 17, 2025 at 5:27 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Vibes.
Graphic text that reads BARBED RHUBARB. The word BARBED is spiky. The word RHUBARB is made of rhubarb pieces. Both a pink and green on a light pink background.
December 16, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
kendrawrites.com
I keep thinking about that Ray Bradbury quote?

"We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."

And how what so many of us are being filled with is darkness and horror.
December 15, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
alocasiamag.bsky.social
ALOCASIA #16 is here w/ queer planty writing as winter winters about!

w/ Kit Steitz, Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom, Saheed Sunday, Laura Mota-Juang, Jessica Le, Stephen Schwei, Sarp Sozdinler, Emdash, Marcy Rae Henry, & Sreeja Naskar

alocasia.org
alocasia leaf background with white text reading issue 16
December 15, 2025 at 3:12 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Officially introducing my 2026 project:

A darkly funny (to me, at least) weekly serial about a woman becoming a plant, the guises of transformation & learning to recognize them when we barely recognize ourselves.

Millennial. Queer. Everyday magic slice-of-life.

Barbed Rhubarb launches January 1.
December 15, 2025 at 3:56 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
If you see this, we IMPLORE YOU to post a picture from whatever device you’re using without explanation.
A birdfeeder-cam photo of a Steller’s Jay, a crested black and blue bird. It looks like it is high and grinning.
December 15, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
sqliebert.bsky.social
An early #smallpoemsunday from me and W.S. Merwin.
PROPAGATION You cut yourself in half to start over. You tremble less when you dig. Dirt takes what your hands give it. You plant cosmos, watch them bend pink in the wind. A friend asks what you're learning. You say: how to be held by something that doesn't demand you stay the same. To the present tense By the time you are by the time you come to be by the time you read this by the time you are written by the time you forget by the time you are water through fingers by the time you are taken for granted by the time it hurts by the time it goes on hurting by the time there are no words for you by the time you remember but without the names by the time you are in the papers and on the telephone passing unnoticed there too who is it to whom you come before whose very eyes you are disappearing without making yourself known
December 14, 2025 at 2:59 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
An early #smallpoemsunday from me and W.S. Merwin.
PROPAGATION You cut yourself in half to start over. You tremble less when you dig. Dirt takes what your hands give it. You plant cosmos, watch them bend pink in the wind. A friend asks what you're learning. You say: how to be held by something that doesn't demand you stay the same. To the present tense By the time you are by the time you come to be by the time you read this by the time you are written by the time you forget by the time you are water through fingers by the time you are taken for granted by the time it hurts by the time it goes on hurting by the time there are no words for you by the time you remember but without the names by the time you are in the papers and on the telephone passing unnoticed there too who is it to whom you come before whose very eyes you are disappearing without making yourself known
December 14, 2025 at 2:59 PM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Thanks to the absolute ease of setting up with Pagecord, I'm generally set. Website up and running with Works page in place, waiting for me to get going on the serial fiction.

Now to keep pushing on name updates from old publishers.

willowloom.online
December 14, 2025 at 3:28 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
My December now involves getting a website in order…

Need to list credits and space for more.

Also, in the new year, will be starting to post a weekly serialized fiction (first month is ready).
December 14, 2025 at 12:22 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
I saw Chicago at least 8 times in the theater with different friends.

Moulin Rouge and the summer of Lady Marmalade. Being sung from car windows and front porches.

Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity followed by Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. Understanding the power of transformation.
davelevitan.bsky.social Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 14d
Raising the always fun question: What are your most memorable theater-going experiences?

Mine also include The Matrix, Blair Witch, and being way too stoned in Belgium when Fellowship of the Ring was sold out so we sat in the back row for Mulholland Drive instead.
davelevitan.bsky.social Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 14d
It was hands-down one of the most memorable theater-going experiences I can remember, a collective 30-minute butt-clench/armrest-grab for the final climb. And we knew he lived! Wild.
December 13, 2025 at 1:07 AM
sqliebert.bsky.social
Also tossing Cosmovisión from Half Gringa into the mix for favorite albums of 2025. This track is stunning.

youtu.be/dUMHMKzvO5c
Half Gringa - Glacier Walker
YouTube video by Half Gringa
youtu.be
December 10, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Selby Liebert
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
The idea that we must be Very Useful Engines will kill us.
December 10, 2025 at 10:44 PM