nonbinary – Open Sorcery

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

Fediverse Reactions

July 30, 2026

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

August 3, 2025

this one is called “sin eater”.

i think you seared ghosts into my bones
down deep into the marrow

and time may be round, but i am forced to remain here
suffering, as all of time’s rivers and streams flow back into me
and the specters of all the things you whispered and lies you screamed
are made to ride with me too

i am not religious, but i am spiritual
and i am your confessor, always have been, 
and i worry i always will be 
grayscale, amoral, atemporal priest of these jagged streets
i am the one person who will never forgive you
no matter how hard you try to forget me

where can i go and who can i turn to
who can unmake, unbaptize, undo what you did to me
when you already tried me by fire and inducted me 
into your thorny order? so this is my confession:
i didn’t want this, no matter how much you think i needed it
and this life of yours? you can keep it

-Allēna 8/2/2025

August 3, 2025

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

July 29, 2025

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.

July 27, 2025

One (1) cripplepunk baked potato, reporting for duty.

Both eyes were meant to be closed in this picture. 🤣

I have been bribed with sushi and caffeine to make this trip, but I wanted to go anyway.

-Allēna

#stoner #NEISvoid #chronicpain #chronicillness #selfie #queerselfie #nonbinary

Fediverse Reactions

April 3, 2025

I released a nifty new micro chapbook of poems I’ve been sitting on yesterday.

It’s called Bellum, the Latin word for war. It’s angry, but I’m very proud of it. It includes “my first madness”, which previously appeared here some weeks back.

Here are some samples from it.

It’s available for sale on our itch.io page, and is included in a large bundle of creations you can snag for only $10 USD that will help Emerson’s lemon of a car get fixed once and for all so we can stay mobile.

I’m very proud of it.

-Allēna

April 2, 2025

My Favorite Deadly Sin of Gender Transition.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about why the system transitioned and I think a great deal of the motivations aside from a desire from gender euphoria came down to sheer MOTHERFUCKING spite and wrath at people pointlessly gatekeeping others from activities on the basis of perceived biological sex. So by that logic, if we ascribed to any “deadly sin” about our transition, it would be gender wrath.

However, the way we ended up didn’t fall under any sort of easily “clockable” binary. We are often mistaken for transfem when we are DEFINITELY not transfem, we are very much some flavor of transmasc to transneutral and most of us are quite secure in that, Allēna aside, who identifies as woman adjacent and always has. So we often find cis people’s complete incompetence when it comes to correctly assessing our gender OR biological sex absolutely fucking hilarious, especially when they claim “they can always tell” what’s in someone’s pants.

This entire train of thought led to me picturing someone attempting to gatekeep me from an activity, saying “you can’t do this, you’re a BOY!! Uhhhh. You’re a girl!! No, wait! You’re a boy!”

And then me casually flashing them a thousand watt smile and saying, “Actually, I can. I have a permit,” then handing them the permit, which reads,

“Permit. Expiration: Never.

FUCK. YOU.

I do what I want.”

Would it work? Probably not.

Is it a hilarious mental image? ABSOLUTELY.

-Lazarus

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February 11, 2025

Damn it, River.

My fucking headmate thought it was an excellent and hilarious fucking idea to schedule a neurologist appointment on the day our father died of brain cancer nine years prior and then make me handle it. At least Lazarus had the fucking foresight to get it switched to a virtual appointment several damn days ago so I didn’t have to go anywhere.

I’m never letting Mr. Batshit For Brainholes schedule anything ever again. This wasn’t fucking funny.

But at least we have that out of the way, and an EEG is scheduled for February 18. They might strobe the fuck out of our brainhole during that, so brace yourselves for utterly batshit post seizure posts from us truly. 😭

Fun fucking times. Thank you, Lazarus, for your excellent harm reduction work. At least you didn’t try to punk me for once.

I somehow summoned the energy (likely due to sheer irritation at River’s bullshit idea of a joke) to put clothes on and then shave my face later, so have selfies in honor of this most dubious occasion.