Poetry by Brittany Coffman

                          ​Mitchell Hopkins CC



the looking church
​
It is raining and there is a phoenix on the street corner selling tickets                         
To a show no one will ever see his red plumage scattered at his feet
While his neighbor the hound avoids his own tawny complexion in 
The mirror a group of ibex run past with branches cradled over their 
Heads startling twenty-three conspiracy pigeons and one assassin cat 
The badger behind the wheel of an expensive beetle with silver horns 
Locked together with a short orange giraffe suffering from a mad god 
Complex she won’t ever make the front page run by some sort of scarab 
Cult and their fascination with spiders and their snatched snip politics
Printed off the hides of the pups who lived in that alley once upon a time
It is raining and there is a peacock carrying too many feathers in her arms                         
To the office where she is devoured by asking blue eyes and unwanted
Claws in another block a fox slipping an emerald into her coat pocket 
She’ll sell it to that jackrabbit the white one covered in gold body glitter
Living above a deli with druggie bluegills and their grey water cameras
The lonely black bear sitting on that empty stoop his ears cropped to
Perfection once upon a time but now limp like the old sloth too slow for 
Change who was gobbled up by that tricky adder in the city’s basement 
While the weasels stood on their hind legs and watched with petty grins 
As a sparrow pushed a stroller past a group of smoking leather stallions 
It is raining and the flamingos go to school with their ballet shoes they all 
Look the same at least in a cluster the neon panther hurrying them along 
While a raven flies overhead her talons filled with love notes from her 
Lover a pretty quetzal more queer than she is cousins with the lion who 
Rents downtown in a flat made of skin and stolen yellow beehives.





(In) Over My Head

                                             don’t listen to

a     word I say it                        cantbreathecantbreathe   
      
doesn’t seem                              don't believe me / malignant  

like the t r u t h                          self - my mind - destruct

is truth a thing I want it to be or is that just me

                                                                                m     ind reading?   remind me.

1. existing
2. feeling                  expressing how y o u         were feeling

conversation memory ; conversation breathing a practice in       breath.

                                                                           I’m trying               I             swear
this may-be

dying                                                               the words are blurry again
                                                                          d

obsessive                stop.                                  r
                                                                                        own
                                                                                                     ing

I’m crying vulnerable                                      up

cantbreathe feelings                          make your mind                     over

c h  oking me here/                                                   up                                whelmed

keeping me here                                   the mind’s make                            fear

damage malignant ; contagious is this what I am  un hinged is a dangerous
​
thing to be                                                                            figure out how to           this mind viper





Love&Resistance

I’m looking at their faces. At their purely naked 
bodies and their ability to push and be pushed. 
I’m blown away. Rainbows didn’t exist then, 
but the presses did and they were hot and wild 
and they were lovely. I’m reading their words 
and holding them up to my own heart to see if
they match; I will never be as brave. 
                                                 I came out to my dad 
                                                 we were sitting on the couch 
                                                 watching television. I’d written a lengthy 
                                                 paragraph 
                                                 in the notes app of my phone it 
                                                 had seemed the right thing to do 
                                                 at the time. 
They pushed and pushed and were pushed out 
of windows and onto the spikes of pitchforks 
and I didn’t know. I arrived too late to have 
known before. I’m looking into the faraway 
eyes of a likely-dead lesbian with a sign that 
reads: 
                                                  I am your worst fear. 
                                                  I am your best fantasy.
She’s beautiful. I would have loved to meet her, 
to speak with her. I want to meet them all, every 
single one. They are all of them courageous and
lovers and lovers always win. Even then. 
                                                  I felt foolish reading my dad
                                                  the memo. like reciting 
                                                  modern Shakespeare
                                                  something equally 
                                                  dramatic / I felt 
                                                  really just me 
                                                  trying to explain,
                                                  to figure out 
                                                  how I should do this
                                                  all I should have done 
                                                  was just say it. 
They were selling LGBTQ postcards in the gift
shop. Though I could see a pair of rotten capital
-ist hands all over of them, I bought four in black 
and white. In one, a class photo of transgender men 
and women. One of the women wears an apron and 
carries a rolling pin. 
                                                My dad was quiet 
                                                “okay.” what I expected 
                                                from him the next morning 
                                                he had “googled me” so he 
                                                knew 
                                                for sure what pansexuality meant 
                                                when I was so afraid that 
                                                I still didn’t. 
I’m looking into their faces, wondering what kind of
people they were. I’m assuming they are all long gone
now. Still they are bold and beautiful and I hope that 
they died in bed as someone loved and not at the end
of a pitchfork or a burning pyre. I could probably find
out their true fates but somehow that seems disrespectful 
to their memories. Or maybe they’d want me to know. 
Respect has to be earned.
                                                  I was so scared it was fear. 
                                                  Fear that I was making this
                                                  up (to belong) or trying 
                                                  to be something
                                                  I wasn’t I stayed awake all night 
                                                  thinking and doing “research” 
                                                  trying to make sense of it
                                                  I’d never thought about it
                                                  I was ______ or this
                                                  since the beginning
                                                  sex wasn’t something I ever
                                                  really thought about but love
                                                  was and attraction I was learning
                                                  fluid for me. That was a relief 
                                                  I didn’t know I needed 
                                                  the framework wasn’t so rigid 
                                                  I could be with X/Y/someone all 
                                                  of a sudden I could know
                                                  that mattered
                                                  to me.
​
​

Brittany Coffman is a 20-year-old poet and fiction writer based in New York. Her writing explores dark corners as a way to portray language. She enjoys creating weird and wonderful expressions of the mundane and fantasy.

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