#milwaukeepoet — Public Fediverse posts

Hi, everyone. My name is Peri.

I wrote this today:

I'm the result of two generations of fire, at least 
my grandfather saw horrors he likes to laugh 
about and won't talk about directly, but 
he replicates them compulsively when 
he's stressed out or bored 
my mother does the same thing and laughs 
about it too, but watches me for 
the same signs, the same crazy, like a ticking 
time bomb although often she is the cause 
of the insanity she fears so deeply at her core. 

I want to say that the shows I like 
hit too close to home, but they 
play out like my life did for twenty four years. 
pyromania burned through my mother's 
line, held my grandfather prisoner. 
my mother had her own compulsions, 
not just fire. her hands, cold as death, were 
always busy, always searching, always 
grasping for another handhold, another tool, 
another soul, another project. her hazel eyes
knew every entrance and exit, how to find
and get leverage, and she was plagued by 
the nightmares, too. under the constant 
stress of a dying husband and warring children, 
her mind held her hostage for eighteen years, 
forcing her to build fortress after fortress, 
light fire after fire, see threat after threat,
run and run. 

and she saw me as a blackened mirror 
of herself, a shell burned through. 
she followed me like a firewatcher, 
as though I was a bomb primed to explode. 
my compulsions are not hers, but the terror 
is the same. the mechanism is the same 
or is similar enough to be indistinguishable. 
but I am here to quench the fire and the thirst
and I might be crazy but I'm here to do things 
differently, so watch me if you must 
but be prepared for me to
douse 
your 
flame

-Peri 9/25/2025

#amwritingpoetry #milwaukeepoet #poetry

I just wrote this. It’s called “hurricane lazarus”, and it’s inspired by a conversation I had with a very powerful soul I met yesterday.

I was born in an otherwise normal middle of june at the tail end of tornado alley. I’m a gemini, scorpio moon, half air, half water, all storm and
tremendous force. say what you want about astrology, scorpios, or geminis, I’ll tell you what I know. I learned as a young child why they name storms after people.

perhaps some seal or some levee broke in an unseen place upon my birth, because death would dog my every step
and I swear on my father’s grave that hell
followed after that.

nine months after I was born, I got sick twice,
one week apart. the first virus took out my
immune system, the second took out my heart.
but I was a fighter. they hooked me up to a
machine that would breathe for me. one dose
of the meds they gave me would knock
my full grown, linebacker sized father out for
ten hours because I refused to go quietly,
like a category five hurricane slamming into
a coastline during the worst season on record.
I ripped through death and pain so goddamned
hard that death had a near me experience.

then came a sepsis scare. then a stroke. then
near starvation. each time I wailed a hurricane,
hundred fifty seven mile an hour straight line winds.
death learned to hate to see me coming.
all before I was three.

I learned to watch the storms that mirrored my
soul, learned to love the wind and the water,
find peace in the howling and the sickly blue green sky. in 2000, two tornadoes tore through
my city, devouring chunks of the skyline. there
are still signs and monuments there if you know
where to look.

nobody thought I’d live to see eighteen, twenty one, twenty three. they bet against me, calling me
crazy, plotting against me, betraying me when I needed them most. I learned to become inevitable, to channel my force into words, into song, into low pressure systems of my own.
so their plans didn’t hold.
their levees didn’t hold. they cracked under their
own weight and were washed away in the storm
surge when the people didn’t evacuate in time.

when I was twenty five, a boyfriend called me
what I was, a barely contained hurricane.
I lived with a lover when I first moved to
milwaukee who worked on emergency alert
machines. I learned the names of my surroundings when storms
rolled in with the same passion in which I
learned about her, the same way I studied the
storms when I was younger.
and I wonder if someday
someone will name a hurricane after me.

-Allēna 9/22/2025

#amWritingPoetry #hurricanes #meteorology #milwaukeepoet