Write This Second takes readers on a journey. Each poem stands on it’s own, but if you read them in order they tell a story. Together the poetry tells a story of intergenerational trauma and more importantly intergenerational healing with the goal encouraging readers learn to speak to and listen to and believe one another. My workshops cultivate empowerment by inspiring participants to bear with-ness to their lives through creative self-expression using poetry and collage, as I have done in my own life. Poetry led me from being a high school dropout to earning an MA and ultimately a person who thrives by striving to transform communities as a poet, collage artist, advocate, and facilitator. Order Write This Second: A Poetic Memoir by emailing kira.allen@writethissec.com with your name and shipping address, I will contact you to send payment via Venmo @kira-allen, the price is $25 for a signed copy (this includes tax & shipping) published by Nothing But the Truth on March 19, 2019.
“Kira Lynne Allen’s first full length book of poetry is so gorgeous, so rich in honesty, truth, pain and healing, beauty and rage and humanity, that it is going to change lives. It gives permission, and that means that it gives life. It gives off heat and fresh air. It exposes, encourages, challenges, delights. I found it thrilling.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“Kira Lynne Allen works from the strong tradition of Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez and Janice Mirikitani. Write This Second tells of an America so many don’t want to see, refuse to see, an America where abuse and racism go hand in hand, where the traumas of family history merge with the traumas of the history of people of color in this country. But this astonishing book is also a work of hope and recovery, of a survivor who has healed herself and passed on a new legacy to her daughters and to her readers. I can’t recall the last poetry book that made me cry. Write This Second made me cry. Read it for it’s witnessing and for it’s healing. For the triumph of this poet as witness and seer.”—David Mura, author of Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei
“This is one of the most courageous books I’ve read. With “Write This Second” Kira Allen brings forth a survivor’s howl. There are no easy words here. Allen journeys us through two decades of abuse, devastation, and silence to her triumphant rebirth. Allen is a Phoenix rising from the ashes of trauma. These words are her wings. Let’s celebrate her flight.” —Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, author of, Karma’s Footsteps
Here’s the book’s title poem: WRITE THIS SECOND
When the goal is Escape
Fight or flight
consumption or deprivation
self-sabotage or being frozen in place
They all work for a while
When none of them work
When fear of incest or racism or rape or addiction
or silence or domestic violence
or suicide consumes you
When you want to take a step towards life anyway
but you have no idea how
When you’re ready to remove the gag that keeps you from speaking
When you’re trying to think of a plan a way out
wishing you had a better skill set
When you think I can’t have one more ________________
before I get it together or I’ll be dead
When you are sick and tired of being sick and tired
That will be the beginning
Seize that second of clarity and WRITE
Write to reclaim life
to recover consciousness
to resist feelings of unworthiness
to understand yourself
to define yourself
How do you decide to believe you are worth the work
When it feels like you never got to decide anything
When what you eat or wear or listen to or do with your very own body
depends on what someone else wants or needs from you
How do you keep the taste of fear from souring your stomach
You write to understand
the difference between
what forms your anger and
what ties your tongue
Write about the secrets
You think will make you spontaneously combust
Because being too little to understand
or unconscious
or just trying to survive
Doesn’t mean you deserved it
IT WAS NEVER YOUR FAULT
Because secrets eat at your guts and kill you anyway
If you let them
Because even when you don’t feel like the same person anymore
the secrets don’t go away
Because it is only in writing them down and speaking them out loud
that they lose their power
Because the only way out is through
Because recognizing you were always tenacious creative and resilient
or you’d be dead already
Gives you real power
the power to choose love over fear
The power to speak to and listen to and believe one another
Because we need to know what
Strength smells like
Joy sounds like
Tenderness looks like
Love feels like
We trace
our bodies
to illuminate
the difference
between
what we got
spoon-fed
and what is true
We honor our
Precious selves
who use all their survival skills
to make it here
At last
we write to gain perspective
learn to discard shame that was never ours
and delight in our divine identities
We write to inspire each other
to grasp an appreciation for each second of our lives
to practice mercy patience and steadfast love
we got to start on the inside and work our way out
Write this second
we call across the generations
It’s time to break the silent secret spell
keeping us buried above ground
Write this second
It’s time to evoke consciousness
put an end to the endless fears
we got to heal our marrow
Write this Second
I too You too We too have another way
It’s time we speak to and listen to and believe one another
It’s time to ignite a life of grace guided by faith love and action
Write This Second 
Very impressive. You have a lot of talent so keep writing.
So beautiful and inspiring! Gives me hope!!