In It Probably Won’t Work, But It’s Good to Have a Theory, Tadeyeske interrogates control, desire, girlhood, inheritance, medical rooms, grocery store lighting, shame, memory, and the strange choreography of being alive inside a body that keeps bleeding, wanting, dissolving, surviving. These poems hold the absurd and the catastrophic in the same palm. They are devotional and irreverent. They are obsessed with the small humiliations that shape us and the cosmic questions that won’t leave us alone.
Across the collection, Tadeyeske moves through dentist chairs and cauterizations, moths and mirrors, fox guts and carnival goldfish, chapstick and chapels. There are prayers that don’t land. There are theories that fail beautifully. There is humor sharp enough to bruise. There is grief that disguises itself as errands. There is the constant, humming awareness that love and terror are often indistinguishable at close range.
What if control is just vinegar on the counter?
What if survival is laughing when you bleed?
What if the hardest thing to do is nothing?
What if you met whatever keeps the world happening?
These poems are preoccupied with the body as evidence. The body as weather pattern. The body as something both holy and inconvenient. They are interested in the difference between “a lot” and “too much.” They examine what we inherit, what we forgive, what we feed under the porch. They ache toward connection while mistrusting it. They want to look expensive when hurting. They want to count the ways we forget we’re connected and still believe that connection matters. And we are excited to share them with you.
CHELSEA TADEYESKE is a poet and bookmaker from Milwaukee, WI where she co-edits pitymilk press and curates poetry readings in her apartment, The Bell Tower. She is the author of several chapbooks including If You Bend It Backwards Nothing Really Happens (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017), Princess Diana (bathmatics, 2019), What If Loving You Wasn’t About Me? w/ Edie Roberts (bathmatics, 2022), Island Weather (pitymilk press, 2022) and Orange Poems (pitymilk press, 2024). She is a Virgo sun, Libra rising and Aquarius moon born in the year of the snake.
CHLOÉ ALLYN is a poet and facilitator from Appleton, WI. Inspired by letters, books and society, Allyn’s artistic work is often covered in words. She uses her creative practice to consider two questions: how to bring poetry to an unexpected space and how can this be a book? She works in a variety of media and views each as another exciting way to play with words. Within her poetry, Allyn explores pleasure, decolonization and humanity. She is dedicated to inspiring others and building artistic community. This fall, she will begin her poetry MFA at the University of Minnesota. http://chloeallyn.com.
40 pages. Hand sewn. Cover laser printed on craft card-stock.
Printed and formal release in April, 2026.
Ilustrations by Chloé Allyn. Illustration design by Edie Roberts. Layout by Edie Roberts and Chelsea Tadeyeske.
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