Paying for Gas with Quarters: A Parent's Odyssey in Poems

In her debut full-length collection of poetry, Paying for Gas with Quarters, U.S. Army veteran Aly Allen explores and illuminates the war in Afghanistan, wartime and childhood traumas, and post-war parenthood.

Allen deployed to Afghanistan as a broadcast journalist with the U.S. 10th Mountain Division. A divorced parent of two, Allen is neurodivergent, as are her kids. She also is diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She recently began gender-transition, after years of sobriety and therapy.

Allen's writing often ponders the effects war has on her children and first wife. Soldiers and veterans are directly affected by wartime experiences, she says, but how many others inherit these wounds?

Many of Allen's poems thrust readers into the midst of daily chaos-whether in the parental or soldierly gaze-weaving attempts to navigate parent-child relationships both present and past, wrestling with grief and guilt, but also growing in hope toward stability and healing.

HERE'S WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING:

"War, family, life, and death collide in this collection. Allen's reverberating lines beat with ear-splitting blasts of beauty."

-Jason Poudrier, author of Red Fields

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"'No / matter the changes / they never feel / correct'. The odyssey of Aly Allen's Paying for Gas with Quarters takes the reader through the trials of parenthood, adult relationships, a military career, transitioning into civilian life, and discovering self-identity through it all. Her debut collection challenges memory and the present to hold beauty and pain together in one vision, just like a field of poppies blooming in a field to honor what was lost and what should be celebrated."

-Lisa Stice, author of FORCES, Permanent Change of Station, and other poetry collections

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"Aly Allen's words awaken us to the parallels of military and war to parenthood. The messy, entangled chaos that is inevitably life-changing. She is unafraid to reveal her human-ness through these poems, the places 'Where I-am becomes where I-am-lost.' Paying for Gas with Quarters weaves together complex truths: War changes us and yet leaves us longing, still, for connection."

-Jessi M. Atherton, author of The Time War Takes: Poems

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"New war voices bring new war stories! Aly Allen's clear-eyed poems of battles are tinged with humor and hope. Regardless of their own circumstances and life-experiences, readers will surely be comforted with this revelation: We are all in this together. We are each deserving of grace."

-Randy Brown, author of Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire

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"In Paying for Gas with Quarters, Aly Allen weaves the chaos of war into the fabric of parenthood. Her poems crash like mortar fire over the reader in staccato bursts of heart-wrenching emotion. She finds commonalities between the everyday isolation of parenting, and the 'composed vibrations' of battle. This collection is at once a quiet elegy and a defiant war cry that reminds readers how fragile-and valuable-life is."

-Gary Reddin, author of An Abridged History of American Violence and Quantum Entanglement