(In all seriousness, you should come see @mkzariel and I perform @ the Lions Tooth on April 4th. It’s gonna be Awesome)
#milwaukee #poetryperformance #liveevent #queer #trans #wisconsinpoets #booktour #author #poetry
Blog
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This poem kinda happened to me just now.
-Allēna
#poetry #processing #chronicfatigue #queer #wisconsinpoet #queerpoetry #musician
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I woke up and I had to type this out before I lost it.
I look at the fireworks show that has become
of my life and call each spark and sparkle
something different, divorced from me
as if I were watching the show on a field
on the 4th of July
and it isn't my own life that keeps exploding -~this came to me in a dream
-Allēna 3/19/2026 -
I had a great date today.
It turns out that the set of keys Emerson made for me didn’t work and he was at school, so my partner and I just chilled out inside and ordered in. She made me laugh so hard at one point that I had a coughing fit and saw stars 🤣
It was a wonderful time and I hope I can see her soon 💛
-Allēna
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Mk and I are going to be doing another joint reading!
This time it will be in my Discord server, the opensorceryy club.
It’s on March 31 at 8PM and I hope I see y’all there 💛 mk will be reading selections from its recently published chapbook, Different With Him, and I will be reading some very queer pieces from my most recent zine, Fear Not The Brave Pain, and beyond.
I’m stoked.
-Allēna
Fediverse reactions
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“thirsty ghost”
you lived thirsty
you wanted to set yourself on
fire – and in the end, you succeeded
in glorious, standing room only effigy
planned to the last detail
as only you could do
I sang at your funeral
but it never quite felt like the end
I carried all the crushing weight of you
when it felt like the sun went out
and I’ve been stumbling through the dark
for the past ten years
when it seemed like the rest of the world
couldn’t wait for both of us to die
I’ve persisted
a devil’s bargain but one I’d take again
and again
just to get to spit in their smug fucking faces
(or on their graves) and tell them that in the end
even you didn’t get to define me and
they, especially don’t get to twist your memory into
a weapon to cut, sear, break, or peel me into their
image
I did that myself
I shattered myself into the form I desired
my body became a war torn land the rest of the
world forgot
I swore to make them remember
I peeled layers upon layers of self
from this soul
I added more and removed them again
I fit seven lifetimes into these twenty eight year
old ancient bones
I broke the fuck out of my slowly failing heart
if you had truly known me
would you be proud?
or maybe I joined you in the afterlife
maybe this is hell
maybe all the devils are here
maybe I’ve always been empty-Allēna 3/15/2026
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I did this today.
I had so much fun.
My hands were covered in red paint for a longggg time afterwards…
-Allēna
Fediverse reactions
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I’ve been so tired today.
I posted a video asking about what some guy issues I’ve been having might be being caused by, and the resounding verdict seems to be my gallbladder. So I guess that means greasy food – including the spicy Italian sandwich I got from Subway earlier – should probably be out of the question.
We’ll see.. I am a slut for pizza, and sometimes grease is worth the pain.
I made an appointment to talk about this further with my PCP, and I should be seeing her next week I think.
Wish me luck, I suppose.
-Allēna
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I think I’m starting to figure out why I’m so reserved/”cold” emotionally.
When I was a teenager, like 13-15, I was a HOPELESS romantic. I would write fully fledged, and ultimately fully produced and orchestrated songs for my crushes and create massive works of art across a variety of mediums that took months, sometimes years, to complete, at an age when most boys couldn’t be arsed to get a girl flowers unless their mothers or sisters prompted them, ESPECIALLY if that girl scared them shitless.
And I was intense about this art. If someone inspired a piece, they’d probably end up knowing. I was intense about EVERYTHING. I was often the teachers’ favorite, I knew the answers to most questions, I HAD done the homework, I had an excellent memory, and I wasn’t afraid to kick anyone’s ass if and when it came time for trivia in almost any subject. I was a pompous dick about it, too 🤣 I was gonna win by a mile and I knew it. I wasn’t the type of person in high school that guys wanted to date. Be friends with, if they were daring, but not date.
The transition from hopeless romantic to cynic came at about age 16-17 after endless rejections and being told to tone myself down over and over. I began to hate my happy, romantic side. After one final diplomatic rejection from the guy I had written “My Island” about and being told to tone myself down one final time, I marched into my long term hairstylist’s office as soon as she was free and told her to cut all my damn hair off and give me the pixie cut I’d desperately wanted since my headmate Castor had cut our hair short like that when he was 10. I buried the rest of my sentimentality with that haircut, too, and started playing my cards close to my chest.
I still wrote huge things for my crushes, but that, too, stopped after I wrote my album The Places We Come Home To in 2018 for my first husband when I was 20.
I hated it so viscerally that it took two years to release a proper follow-up to it, Light on the Final Day, and I had written that record a few months BEFORE most of Places ever occurred to me.
It would take nearly three years after that for us to release any kind of proper follow-up to Light on the Final Day, something broke in me so badly. And it wasn’t even really me that wrote any of it, Metacognition (2023) is Eight’s masterpiece.
And for someone used to writing and recording several records a YEAR, this devastated me.
It’s taken being in several lovely partnerships to get me to uncover a FRACTION of that sentimentality. I still really can’t write happy things without cringing or feeling sick, but I’m getting there. I’m immensely grateful for their patience while I unfuck myself.
-Allēna