Open Sorcery

Tag: queerpoet

  • Allēna performed a very vulnerable piece tonight at Poet’s Monday.

    This is called “body politics.” Here is the performance.

    -Australis, he/him, hello, I’m new.

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  • I wrote this based on a conversation I had with a cool fellow poet after Poets’ Monday last week.

    “fog kisses”

    the lake visits me and gives me little fog kisses
    as she’s been doing since before the house
    reached out its unforgiving arms and swallowed me
    they caress my skin and turn
    the street lights into stage lights
    every turn on the drive home is a perfectly framed
    work of art

    I once called her my wife many years ago
    when I had a different name, a different life,
    practically a different face
    when every nerve from
    my neck to my hands screamed pain and
    fatigue
    I was angrier then, I think, to keep myself alive
    but the rage served its purpose
    that name served its purpose
    as did that life and that house
    but I never stopped loving that lake

    I’m still here, sifting through the remainder of
    what was left behind when I found her
    where do I go now?
    how do I leave the wrath behind when it’s seared
    itself into every cell in my body?
    she’s more home
    than my own skin…

    -Allēna 10/22/2025

  • This is a new poem called “body politics”. I hope y’all like it 💛

    -Allēna

  • This was my Tabi Po performance.

    I slammed “sin eater”.

    “sin eater” was originally published in my zine when the lighting strikes me back.

    -Allēna

  • “depersonalization blues”

    these are the lengths you drove me to 
    I don't write verses anymore, I write indictments 
    I built a twisted empire out of everything you were
    too afraid to touch in all of the places I knew you'd 
    never look, and there, in the shadows, I waited
    you did exactly what I wanted you to do. 

    anger is a tool, I made it into an art form because of you.

    I may be half the things you are but I am everywhere 
    you're not, and that's something to be proud of when
    I could outclass you in my sleep by the time I was 
    fourteen. doesn't that eat you alive?
    knowing that you created the one person who could 
    ever destroy you?

    so go on, sleep soundly now, make those jokes 
    at my expense, tell them all I died or went insane 
    because the joke’s on you -
    I may be crazy, but you made me that way
    and I'm infinitely happier when you're gone
    -Allēna & June, 8/13/2025

  • y’all get a two for one special tonight. this one’s called “queer pressure”.

    after careful consideration, i have determined

    that i didn’t know what it was like to put space between the 
    world and me, so i held everything and everyone at
    an artificial distance while seeing too close, held everything
    i ever earned in a vise grip and let myself slip into
    the grip of my vices

    i stared into the void so long that it blinked before i did 
    and then i mistook the deep nothing of it for your eyes
    until there was nothing left but a deep, deep hole

    here’s the thing about an addiction, though -
    admitting you have it is the first step toward vindication

    -Allēna 8/2/2025

  • “a brief inquiry into the shape of time”

    “you can always say no” is the second oldest lie
    there is, up there with “you will always be mine”
    and if that seems wrong to you, consider the following -
    i left you because you were too close a mirror to all 
    the things i swore had claws and drank away to sleep at night
    and i will always elude you because you vowed to face me and never could
    -Allēna 8/1/2025
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  • I call this one “song of experience”.

    you claim that i'm better than you, when in reality
    i’m nothing but a practiced poor player 
    who knows how to call fire and gold from nothing but words
    i stand before you and strut and fret my hour upon the stage
    in much the same way i did since i was a child -
    and when i became a teenager i found the voice of a haunted pipe organ
    that only increased in volume and resonance with time and skill
    and when i was 24 i unsexed myself and learned to roar
    got some damned spots on my hands 
    (i roar about them, too)
    i learned the difference between hard and soft, between open palms 
    and hidden knives
    and built a cathedral for my pipe organ voice 
    burnt out like a caravan or a candle a time or nineteen
    so don’t ever think you’re better than me
    learn to screw your courage to the sticking place
    dust off the keys, call the fire
    and sing
     07/28/2025

    -Allēna

  • I wrote this at the poetry workshop I went to today:

    i'm not sorry for the wisdom that pours out of me, breaking through the cracks, bursting at the seams
    i'm one of the rare few that can love to the point of invention, but believe me, I can hate to the point of invention, unapologetically
    and i'm not sorry for being myself -
    a gordian knot, a bois d'arc tree,
    a technicolor, queer, living scream you
    could never even begin to hope to parse, cut down to size in
    thirteen lifetimes.
    i've danced in the space between life and death more times than 
    you've ever given yourself permission to live 
    and you will never destroy me, not even in death. 
    the empires i've built and burned 
    out of beauty and rage, the space i've claimed and wars i've waged
    to create who i am when you don't even know who you are - and you are twice my age... i'm not sorry for that. 
    i've grown around you. i've loved around you. i've rested around you. i've learned that i didn't fucking deserve any of what you did to me. and i'm not sorry. 
    you should be.

  • I found a cool as hell prompt series/poetry competition hosted by @poetchaotique on Instagram, and this is my response to no. 13, (a)live. I call it “letter to theseus”. -Allēna

    #mythology #PoetryTraps2025 #queerpoet #transpoet #poetry #traumacore #queercore #spilledink #pridemonth