Open Sorcery

Tag: milwaukee

  • the moment hits you like a cannon blast

    // title taken from “vanish canvas” by erra

    Hi, all.

    I’m so sorry for my prolonged absence. This site has been down for an extended period of time and I’ve been unable to post. I’m making use of its uptime to post while I can, clean out spam comments, update plugins, what have you so that hopefully it’s down less frequently.

    It seems like nothing and everything has been happening all at once. I feel like I’ve been in a deep cocoon in my head since late June trying to make sense of who I am now after the last five years or so. I have been taking an extended hiatus from posting videos on social media due to burnout as well as explicit and detailed threats on my and my system’s life. Going viral like this in January was somewhat accidental, and I never truly intended to be a public figure of this magnitude, despite how inevitable it’s seemed since for pretty much our entire life.

    So we’ve been resting and trying to make sense of where our life has gone, as well as where as it’s going now. I love Milwaukee and I fully intend to stay here for as long as the city and its people will have me, something I would never have said back when we started this blog, and we have some interesting things in the works, like an interview on the radio on October, a workshop in November, and a feature already lined up around our birthday next year.

    I’m not sure when we’re going to get back into making short form content. When the time is right or we have something funny to say, we’ll jump back in. But now doesn’t feel like that time. I don’t feel funny anymore. I feel like a character in some lost Christopher Nolan footage, or something. (Hi, Mr. Nolan – if you read this, please consider setting and shooting a film in Milwaukee!!)

    Okay, maybe I feel darkly funny, at best – which is our specialty.

    Stay tuned for more magic, which is coming.

    -Allēna

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  • Emerson and I went to the local Hispanic grocery store today!

    It was a magical store. They really sell everything there. I have been hunting for a place that sells fresh ginger and turmeric so that I can make my special spicy tea, and they have it there, along with a fuckload of other things that I never knew I wanted but it turns out that I very much did. They also have a fabulous restaurant located in the store, where I ate one of the best steak fajita quesadillas I have ever had. I’m glad he took me there 💛

    -Allēna

  • Tomorrow, the day after 4/20, the high where I live is supposed to be 69° Fahrenheit.

    Nice.

    -Allēna

  • The things I do for content..

    Today, that was getting sunsick. Emerson and I went to a bookshop downtown after our original plans fell through, and I got…kind of irradiated making a video while I was waiting for him to finish up inside.

    I have to be awake at 10 AM tomorrow for writer’s group and I did not nap today like a fool.

    Pray for me, if you’re into that. If you’re not, send me good energy, I guess.

    I need to shut my eyes now. I am so, so tired..

    -Allēna

  • I finally figured out how to get pages on this site back to where I need them to be.

    I apologize for any inconvenience if y’all were trying to read Lavender and Scissors or access any of the other pages on this site. I fucked them up a few nights ago and have been trying to resolve the issue pretty much nightly since.

    Yay, I love learning new things on the fly!

    In other news, we’ve been under a flood watch and portions of Milwaukee are underwater. I keep seeing posts about basements getting flooded and restaurants needing to close down. We’re in for more storms later today, which is just horrible considering all of the water that’s already been dumped on us. I’m worried about all of my local friends and followers.

    If you live in the city or you’re being affected by flooding elsewhere, could you please let me know that you’re safe somehow, either in the comments of this post or via a direct message on one of my social platforms?

    -Allēna

  • Emerson and I went to see a reading of a play at County Clare Irish Pub tonight.

    It was simultaneously very funny but also very emotionally heavy, and I took a much needed smoke break towards the end of it. Two girls were discussing their guy drama and I told them to just be bold and also trust their gut because we live in a hellscape. I told them that that’s how I met Emerson and we’re married now 💛 They said that they appreciated my wisdom, so there’s that, I guess. I also met a very inquisitive and affectionate dog named Keaton. Both his owner and I think he might be a boxer mix of some kind, but he’s also very small, so he might have been the runt of his litter. He was a very precious baby who reminded me of my childhood dog, a purebred Lab named Eli, who was constantly excited about everything and was very handsome. Everyone loved that lad even though he was extremely small for his breed.

    I also figured out that a friend of Emerson’s and mine works at County Clare. I almost didn’t recognize her outside of the events I normally see her at, but it’s a small world, I suppose, and I was grateful to run into her. She’s lovely.

    It started raining on the way back to the car, and I think my body is deeply unhappy with all the storms we’re having. I feel like I got hit by a train.

    I think I’m going to go to sleep soon. I definitely need it. I managed to finally go to sleep around 5 AM today. I feel like I was hit by a train.

    Juneau is in one of his states again – I think he might be splitting on me or starting to. He’ll probably come around in about 2 business days with an apology or something to that effect, and we’ll kiss and make up, as it were. I think it would be in poor taste to inform him that he might be splitting on me, he’s an adult and he’ll come to that conclusion on his own. In the meantime, there’s nothing to do but live life, dispense advice to strangers on the sidewalk like I’m some faerie that haunts the shadows, see really heavy plays, and scritch adorable dogs.

    -Allēna

  • Peak Milwaukee queer culture is

    slipping off for a smoke at the ER in below freezing weather and smoking in the deserted, practically flash frozen garden dressed in at least two layers (including your Carhartt coat, which you got from one of your kindest exes and is two sizes too big for you, even now) until you can’t feel your fingertips.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is being afraid to leave your house for years because you ran into the person who made you homeless again over a series of cascading misunderstandings at the same hospital, only to find out through a person you’ve always carried a torch for that they were so afraid of your eventual return that they packed up most of their polycule and fucked off to Denver.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is, despite your isolation, sounding Midwestern despite not being born or raised here.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is moving away from Milwaukee with her with only the clothes on your back for eight months under the guise of a visit after your partners no longer seem to hear you and it feels like talking to your mother all over again.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is missing the lake and her dull, deep silver roar even months after you’ve last seen her, no matter how much you love your new city, no matter how much you want to move back East. You call her your wife, just as you have since the first moment you saw her, and your love for her feels more queer than any relationship you’ve ever had.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is always moving back to Milwaukee.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is building a life with your soulmate and your soul community in Milwaukee, no matter how shitty and cold it gets here. You learned a long time ago that this town will provide, and you saw the best and worst of humanity here. You saw bitter winters shudder into the most beautiful springs you’ve ever beheld. You know and love this city’s underbelly (and you firmly believe you cannot truly love a city without loving the soft, violent, vivid, pulsating underbelly of it first.)

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is forever having to show other queers who aren’t from around here where your town is on a map – and despite your mixed feelings and experiences here, being goddamn proud to live here.

    -Allēna 12/2/2025

  • I wrote this early this morning. I’m very proud of it.

    I've spent too much time
    wrapped around the axle of your love 
    three “I wish I didn't miss you” winters soured 
    I am regretfully tightly wound and solemn
    every day’s a funeral and I break the cold ground 
    hours before daybreak 
    this is one burial that is long overdue 

    I don't hate this city 
    I have come to love it perhaps in spite of you 
    I make praise to its neighborhoods and 
    the lake effect snow 
    my world is finally becoming bigger than the 
    four walls that we share
    you no longer dictate the pace, nor do you set 
    the price of it
    there was once a time that I would have gone out
    and bought the entire city for you if only you'd 
    asked, unto half my kingdom, but you never did
    and now you hate me for things you never 
    had the courage to say 
    and the lies that I drank from your mouth 
    like a perverse communion, for
    when I laid us to rest, you
    had only ash to eat and 
    nakedness to wear 

    so wander these cold, crooked streets wild
    calling for someone to cover up what you did
    some new soul to eat your sin
    while I repair the frayed ends 
    I tore from you

    -Allēna 11/27/2025

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  • “answer”

    I could ask my body
    what will I do when it has fallen
    and regardless of which side I try and
    coax, pry, cajole, or beat an answer from –
    the deaf side or the silent one,
    the answer is always the same:

    it already has.

    sixteen percent of my brain died before I was
    a year old, I fought tooth and nail to keep
    my own heart. (I was finally removed from
    the transplant list when I was 12)
    I’ve had to re-learn how to walk twice,
    I spent this past july remembering
    how to talk again
    after nearly dying for the nineteenth
    time. I couldn’t form a coherent sentence for
    a month after a seizure episode approximately
    twenty five minutes long
    I’ve been everything short of shot
    and sometimes I wish I had been
    just to get the dying over with
    because “what doesn’t kill you makes you
    stronger” is a goddamn myth
    sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you
    wish you were dead

    the deaf side of my body and the silent side
    are asymmetrical, imperfect mirrors of each other
    an invisible remnant of the stroke in ‘98
    I can feel the right side but it doesn’t often
    tell me anything anymore because where it should’ve been able to talk my mother screamed
    over it and told me I was faking my pain
    and my sadness, my fear, that I was just
    looking for attention, and it was beaten into
    listening to her instead (she had a knack for
    going for the face)
    it took 24 years to fully break free and by that time
    my mind had shattered as well

    so, what will I do now that my body has fallen?
    same thing I’ve done since I was a child.
    rest, get up, do the damn thing again
    and try to listen for better whispers

    -Allēna 10/27/2025

  • 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