Writing
Selected Pieces
Poetry
The Duchess of Summer tells you Small Wonders (2025)
asking millennials why we’re so obsessed with sunsets Brawl Lit (2024)
the bard remembers she has errands to run South Florida Poetry Journal (2023)
Call of the Wild Beaver Magazine (2023) nominated for Best of the Net
a boy I know teaches me how to noodle for catfish Fish Barrel Review (2022)
the care and keeping of your dead lover’s plants Emerge Literary Journal (2022)
the moon is the ultimate dead girl Rust + Moth (2022)
hey, sweetheart Tinderbox Poetry Journal (2016)
Everything I Know About Love I Learned from the X Button FreezeRay Poetry (2015)
Fiction
Reckless The Adroit Journal Honorable mention in the Adroit Prizes 2012 competition
“With You I Climb Mountains” in What We Remember, What We Forget: The Best Young Writers and Artists in America
Non-Fiction
“Finding Reasons to Run” in The Blue Mountain Review, issue 31, pg. 164
everything that lives and moves will be food for you in Legacies: An Asian American Anthology
Chapbooks
all you have now is a name
all you have now is a name was the runner-up of the 2025 Quarter Press Chapbook contest.
“While not lengthy, Tolentino’s manuscript is chocked full of beautiful language, opening just right with “all you have now is a name and your heart and this heist”: “Nighttime comes in a cloak you cannot unfold. The sighing hills, the snap of branches underfoot: every noise / is a rock in your stomach. You only remember being swallowed by day and desert.” - Natalie Padilla Young, Contest Judge and Author of All of This Was Once Under Water
The microchap contains 10 poems and is available as a physical book (limited run) and a digital PDF from Quarter Press.
Noctua
Noctua is my debut poetry chapbook, published with Alien Buddha Press in August 2023.
The poems in this collection are all moon and magic and wondering with owls, bards, gods, and demons. It's a thousand what-if scenarios and the sobering pull of the many what-happeneds that follow. There’s a man in the sky. There’s Moses drinking a coke. There’s dolphins. There’s hell and there’s burnout. It’s 38 pages of wishes and regrets and longing and leaving and one not-so-thinly-veiled Emily Dickinson reference.
"Tolentino's lyrical language and evocative imagery transport readers to a world where the moon is the ultimate dead girl, stars hold secrets, and time dances between pre-forever and post-forever. Each poem is a window into the depths of an artistic soul, exploring the nuances of relationships, missed opportunities, and the search for meaning in a post-apocalyptic world."
Would you highly prefer a digital copy, or want to review the book? Please contact me via the form on this website.
