potholes 

we drove in the city of cavities.
you with your dashboard face & me with
my dreams of husband-life. i can't remember
if it was raining or if it was just a creamy fog
or if i just wanted it to be raining. 
in total, i think we only kissed eighteen times. 
how a body is a rosary. measuring a distance
back to salvation. o holy crater. 
snow plow. motorcycle. angel shovel. 
red lights in the dark. the eyes of gargoyles.
you talked about graffiti you'd done
on the hips of dead buildings. i was filling
every single pothole in. each a little shadow box.
my baby shoes & my girl pictures & 
my boy pictures & pictures i took with 
other lovers. i was comforted too that the city
was as pockmarked as us. this night,
like stepping through an archway 
in a forest of unlived lives. we went to aldi.
ate untoasted bagels in the car. 
tried to laugh about a man mistaking us
for girls. the pothole is a site of truth-telling.
they all spoke to me, saying, "you are not
going to build a life with him like you imagine."
i kept filling them. kept saying,
"how do you know?" a dead pigeon. a dead rat. 
no no no. "you know it too," they all said. 
hitting one pothole so hard my car lit up,
every single light on the dashboard. 
you were frightened & so was i. i said,
"we will be okay." praying to my 1996 volvo
that she would restart. that she would
just take us home. she did. 
honking all around us. 
then, pulling up in front of your apartment. 
"i'll text you," i said. you did not reply.
was this the last time i saw you? 
maybe there were others. i drove home though
avoiding as many potholes as i could.
i wept there were so many. they spread
to my face & to my hands. rain water collected.
children came to fill me with flowers.
in bed, i promised myself to try & stop
making us something we were not. 
in the morning all my car tires were flat.
you hadn't texted me. the moon stayed out all day. 

By Rain Black

I am writing this because I feel so frustrated with systems “designed for the greater good” failing to even meet basic standards of protecting the community they serve.

I am a disabled, autistic, mixed indigenous trans person and it is my opinion that people like me, especially those of us experiencing or who have experienced abuse are not welcome, centered, or protected by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. I held a position of power at this institution as their Senior Development Manager and was, in my opinion, pushed out of the organization by an increasingly hostile work environment. I feel this was also compounded by impossible goals, lack of staff and support, zero protection from my abuser in the workplace, and lack of accommodations or understanding around autistic people.

While this is my story, it isn’t the only one that occurs at the center and it won’t be the last given that, in my opinion, nothing meaningful was done in my case and I continued to experience episodes of abuse from my abuser during and after employment. I am honestly so tired of being hurt by this place which is supposed to be a safe place for people like me. 

For my story, I need you to know a few facts that might impact your understanding of the events that take place:

1. There was a domestic violence policy in place prior to Krista Brown-Ly’s employment that was removed. 
2. One was adopted again after fellow workers fought for it after my situation and me leaving the center. 
3. Ashley L. Coleman said it was a “personal issue” rather than something that needed to come up in a leadership meeting, when Robin Gow tried to bring up the need for a domestic violence policy. 
4. My complaint under the domestic violence policy and the code of ethics policy were closed because the events occurred prior to the policy’s inception 
5. Pennsylvania has an at will policy for employment which has been utilized many times at the center for far less. 
6. Ashley told me many times that Krista does not do anything unless she approves of it and can’t act unilaterally. 

I hope this information informs your understanding of my story and my opinion of what happens in it. I will also be including any and all evidence I have. 

When we were interviewing Ashley for the Executive Director position, I was so hopeful and excited. She talked about wanting to be a radical queer organization that centered our most marginalized members. She talked about restorative justice and how we would change things together. Ashley talked the talk, but I feel her actions did not align with those ideals that she espoused. 

Krista, while not the head of the organization, I feel had been acting as such prior to Ashley and influencing how things were responded to. An example is a Black neurodivergent person was fired and she recommended to our interim ED to call the police during this firing. Her exact request was to “call the city liaison,” which if you don’t know is still the police. She has not apologized collectively to staff during when I worked there for endangering any of us or what many of the staff and myself feel was a racist event. An apology was requested multiple times by myself and others. 

She made working with her incredibly difficult, as I was the grants manager and she worked primarily in finance and HR at the time, and would make any collaboration or request for information difficult and unpleasant for me. She would also take mundane events as personal attacks, such as another employee asking me if I wanted to move offices and them offering to tell her about it or people taking it upon themselves to do something kind, like Ashely telling our facilities technician that my door was broken.  The reason I know how she felt is that she told me herself in a one on one meeting moderated by Ashley that I requested because of these repeated issues and disagreements.    

Another piece of information which may or may not be related is that Krista in that meeting with me and Ashley told me that she felt personally attacked by my union involvement and that she felt negative feelings about me because of that. She also engaged in ableist rhetoric about me during that meeting. She said that she interacted with me the way she did because of my union involvement when she felt that I didn’t qualify to be in a union. At that time, I was a grants manager and had no employees underneath me. I managed grants and not people. I also wrote the inclusion and exclusion policies for the union and was the only one who identified themselves to management because I wanted to shield other people from retaliation. At some point Krista was given access to our union chat and also brought it up in that meeting. She called me rude and unprofessional while being visibly angry and raising her voice significantly during the meeting. I sent a follow up email to Ashley as I felt that Krista had engaged in prohibited activities regarding union retaliation, and I don’t feel as though I am the only one that experienced this retaliation either.

The center also recently adopted an anti-bullying policy and it mentions 21 behaviors as prohibited, I feel I experienced all but 4 of the types of bullying identified on the list from Krista. 

During this time, I had been experiencing increasingly violent and frequent episodes of abuse from my then partner, who still works at the center, and I communicated this to Ashley on multiple occasions. These episodes became more frequent after he cheated on me but had been present through our entire relationship. I had to flee my home twice during the year it took me to escape the abuse and was unsuccessful both times due to manipulation from my ex using my dog Gomez and not having a sustainable option for housing. I was eventually successful in getting him to leave my home at the end of July 2023, though I weathered a lot of verbal, financial, and emotional abuse during that time. I spent much of that last 2 months either out of the home at friend’s homes or locked in my bedroom with my dog for our safety. 

The first time I fled, he showed up unannounced to the first location and also texted me the entire time I was gone saying that my dog Gomez missed me and various promises to change. I felt guilty for leaving my dog behind, which was not my choice, so I went back. 

The second time, Ashley was taking a smoke break sitting on one of those large cement plant pots near the center towards the post office and I was trying not to break down. I told her I wasn’t safe, and I needed help. She talked me through staying with someone who he did not know where they lived and she asked if she could tell Krista, to which I said yes. I also shared my location with her and talked to her periodically while I was at this friend’s house. This friend was a previous employee of the center. Ashley also said that I could leave early from work so that I could grab my dog and a few things and run without him knowing I was gone. This was so he couldn’t follow me to where I was staying. He left me alone for a moment, but I received a wall of text about how he would change, and I just wanted to sleep, which I hadn’t been able to do since leaving. 

That’s a common occurrence for me during stressful times in my life, I can’t sleep because my mind races replaying the things that happen to me to try to process them. I don’t understand why people are abusive and I spent a long time trying to understand. I have also experienced those sorts of nights because of how Krista treated me that day at work or a rude email I would receive at 10pm at night from her. At this point in time, I thought Ashley was helping me, both with Krista and my abuser. 

Because of my ex’s abuse, I had also experienced a number of non-verbal episodes leading into workdays which occurred because of sustained verbal and emotional abuse late into the night. I had to borrow an iPad to communicate with others during meetings because my abuser took my voice from me. This, unfortunately, will not be the last time this occurs, but it happens more figuratively.  

My ex, once he no longer lived with me, continued to have to work directly with me, as I was the Senior Development Manager and had no staff at any point during my tenure besides a part-time grants manager who I got shortly before leaving. My abuser was the only one besides myself trained in any of the development procedures. I feel no meaningful effort was made to make different arrangements or protect me. When I would have to work with him, and it was one-on-one he would insult me. As an example, during one occasion, he told me what a horrible sight it was to see me. He would also sit with the lights off next to my office, even though we work on different floors and none of his duties required him to ever use those offices as there were available rooms on his floor. I reported these events, but at this point, I had given up on Ashley or Krista doing anything and I had decided to leave the organization. 

During my last two weeks, Krista and Ashley had no conversations with me about my work or sustainability of the position. It felt almost as if it was being ignored that I was leaving, so I just finished out my last two weeks. I kept my head low and endured anything that happened. Ashley hugged me on my last day and told me I was the center’s joy and that I would be missed. This was the first time she had spoken to me the entire two weeks and it felt hollow to me. I tried to move past it and just forget the center.

I still had a joint gallery show planned at the center that I felt might repair some of my feelings about the center and I had five pieces about the domestic violence I had experienced that fit together with a caption explaining the feelings surrounding the pieces and their meaning. They allowed my abuser to take my pieces off the wall and hold them in an undisclosed location. 

I asked my fellow artist in the gallery show to help me find them and then Robin and I tried to talk to Krista at the end of a meeting Robin had with her. She told us that they had taken down things before, and I reminded her that captions had been altered once and I was there when that happened. It was because they were transphobic, racist, and ableist, which wasn’t what was happening. She said we would look at them together and we tried to schedule a meeting. She did not schedule a meeting with either of us and she went into Robin’s office between his meetings to look at the pieces and caption. She and Ashley refused to meet with either of us and told both Robin and I that there would be no discussion. 

I was told via email that I was harassing him. 

To you the reader, I would ask, how do you harass someone with their own words? With describing feelings and events that you experienced? Any identifying information had been removed from the caption and the pieces prior to hanging them, so again I ask you, how do you harass someone with their own words and actions? I am sure they are not nice pieces for him to view, but discomfort does not equal an attack.

I responded to Krista that harassment has a legal meaning and implication of a sustained series of events. As my abuser had done that to me during our relationship and during my employment there, his taking down my piece would constitute that. Krista then stopped using the word harassment.

As an aside, this also happened during domestic violence awareness month which I don’t think was planned, but just makes this situation worse. 

The pieces that were not allowed in the show included elements of my abusers’ own words and the caption of me talking a bit about my experience and my story. It was anonymous and included no identifiable information. Because they were not allowed in the show, I posted them on my Instagram and talked about them at the reception because I wanted to take back some of my power in this situation. 

I tried one final time to give the center a chance to do what I feel would be the right thing in any of this. Once they adopted their new code of ethics and their domestic violence policy, I made a formal complaint under them.

After my leaving the center, Robin, while he still worked there, was told that nothing happened because I made no formal HR complaint. This was said even though there was no mechanism in the handbook for this, this was never communicated to me, and at this time, there was no domestic violence because it had been removed. I had expressed multiple times, verbatim, to Ashley that I was experiencing abuse in the workplace and at home. I expressed that I didn’t feel safe and that I was coordinating with Robin to not be alone in my office by myself as that is when my ex would invade my space, corner me in my office, and start fights at the workplace. 

I filed the complaint because I want to try to ensure the safety of my fellow community members because my ex is a facilitator of community groups in addition to being an administrative contact for donors and other community members. People who go to the groups are potentially vulnerable to him because he is in a position of power and “deemed safe” by the center due to his employment. Do you, my dear reader, not automatically trust that people employed at nonprofits and other social service areas have your best interest at heart and will not harm you? This trust is dangerous for an abuser to hold.

I don’t think any of this is just about me, I think it sets a dangerous precedent.

My complaint was closed and I feel no meaningful interventions were done. It was denied because the policy didn’t exist during the abuse that happened at the center. This reason for denial was overheard by someone who still works there, so I am certain it will be refuted, but which is it? I didn’t report it the right way or there’s no policy?

At every turn the center failed me and it sets a precedent to not come forward. The bar for getting an organization to do any action is so high that your abuser will be allowed to not only continue their abuse, but it will be sanctioned as allowable. In my case, the only thing that actually gave me any protection was my coworkers and trying to not be alone in the center. This is an incredibly dangerous practice and mindset as for people like me, trans autistic feminine disabled, our abusers kill us. I was just lucky.

My abuser is up for a promotion, still has access to vulnerable people in the support groups and I feel has received no repercussions for his behavior in or outside of the workplace. By being allowed to remain a part of the center, the center is implying that he is safe and has authority amongst the LGBT community. This is literally how abusers find another victim and they might not be lucky the next time. I do not mean to be alarmist, but the risk is real and we see this reflected in domestic and interpersonal violence statistical data.

I have known no peace at the center and it continues to haunt me now that I am on the outside. I desperately want to stop talking about the center, but I feel compelled because my silence has never kept me safe and I feel like if I scream this from the rooftops, someone might be spared what I went through. I believe that dragging unjust practices out into the light allows them to fend for themselves versus them thriving in the darkness.

I would ask that if you believe me, my story, and care about domestic violence, reach out to the center and ask them to do better. Ask Ashley and the board to ensure the safety of those who visit and expel abusers from their walls. All of them.

Email Ashley and the board and tell them to stand by survivors of domestic and interpersonal violence. Tell them that your safety matters. Not for me, but for all of us that have experienced DV/IPV because there are so many of us.

Four out of ten (37.1%) of the respondents to the 2022 PA LGBTQ+ Health Needs Assessment had experienced this kind of violence. If the respondent was trans or gender non-conforming, that number goes up to 39.8% and if the respondent was disabled, the number goes up to 58.5%. If you represent an organization, I would recommend no longer working with the center until they change their practices and center survivors. 

I’ll leave you with one final question: 

If the center is not for us, not safe for us, who’s it for?  

Evidence

Kleintopl@moravian.edu – Liz Kleintop, board president

Acoleman@bradburysullivancenter.org – Ashley Coleman, Executive Director

pokemon center

my pink new york. grime window
& police horse bridle. my parents 
in their smudged white sneakers. 
we to the bieber bus
from kutztown to the city to see
the pokemon center. i dreamed
of real pokemon. animals i could use
to live a life without desks & fire drills.
packing myself up at the age of ten
to set off alone.
what kind of magick are we trying
to enact on children when we conjure 
stories into being?
mascot suites & princess illusions.
here, the pokemon center flourished.
i could almost believe it was real,
a place where I could stay long enough
that once i stepped outside, 
i would be in the kanto region.
i would have a pokeball in my pocket 
& trainers would approach me to fight.
instead, i wept when it was time to leave.
held tightly too the stuffed creature
my parents had gotten. even all these years later
i remember the sliver of me
that knew none of it was real. that hoped
i could make it real if i just remained 
a few hours longer. outside the windows,
the pigeons took flight. a hotdog vendor
wiped sweat from his forehead. 
a liminal space of fantasy breathing
that never tips into fullness. i thought,
give me the world. give me the pokemon world.
we ate ice cream on the sidewalk 
when we were done. sticky sweet fingers.
the late spring sun. "can we come back
tomorrow again?" i asked my father,
already knowing the answer. 
the bus arrived like a broken window. 

home song

for the year i lived in the rabbit burrow
everything was soft. above i heard my family
making funeral arrangements.
we were burying my grandmother
over & over again. she would claw her way up
from the dirt just to stand in the kitchen 
& weep. my gender divided & multiplied.
the rabbits saw me as one of them.
they taught me how to be smaller. they said,
"here is how to die when the dogs come"
& "here is how to die when the lawn mower comes."
it is an art to know exactly where you belong
or else it is the inverse of art. i have never
found a pair of socks that fit. instead 
i fill them with bones to make them organs.
calling my mother in the middle of the night
to say, "can you believe it?" the phone was
under the soil too. frozen in late february.
maybe we are all too romantic about home.
instead, i have loved deepest when it has shifted.
when i've found myself among rabbits.  when
my brother breaks one of my windows 
with a rock with a note taped to it.
the note read, "come back." i still pretend
i never saw it when i speak to him. for me
home is what is left behind. we are a history
of covering the footprints. of burning the bedroom
& saying, "i do not know what you mean
about the girl with the blue hair who lived
on noble street." she is a rabbit now.
he is a rabbit now. i find myself in a living room
where no one has been living for 
a very long time. my grandmother argues,
"and you think you're special."
i shake my head. reply, "i think i am home." 

earring garden

i pierced my own ears with a sewing needle
in the bedroom dark. we were girls,
my mirror & i. either that or we were gardeners. 
we were familiar with blood. dotting
each other's lobes with a sharpie 
& saying, "breathe out." they were pierced before.
a gun in a shopping mall. neon rapture.
my aunt saying, "don't touch them."
to search for where the body is penetrable.
i am always impatient. i craved pineapples 
from my ears. you, my mirror, you craved 
a diamond tooth & lips pressed to your listening. 
i'll tell you a story about trying to have a body. 
being trans is less about gender & more about
longing. what do you long to be? trace your yearning
to the skin & then press the needle. come out
on the other side. dab away the blood.
find the garden of earrings & do not pick
just one. grab studs & hoops & beads.
taste metal. tell everyone, "it didn't hurt at all."
of course it did though. my whole head throbbing.
pillow stained with red blotches 
in the morning. i washed it in the bath,
embarrassed by the gore. still i beamed at myself 
when i gazed in the mirror again in the morning.
there was the ivy. there were the orchids. 

bird watching w/o birds

i cut off my foot & watch it turn
into a crow so that i have
something to chase.
we bought the binoculars 
from a yard sale man
with row-house-crammed teeth.
in my neighborhood a light on
is a dove. feathered dead fathers.
an ambulance made of geese.
the question is always
what do you conjure in absence?
i scatter. i say, "here is the fig tree"
& "here are the wren to form it."
in another life i was a bird
who watched humans.
i kept a little guide in my spirit 
to categorize the species.
stone skippers & bicycle skins. 
horror fathers & turn-coat walkers.
i ask the sky what my common name
would but & it replies,
"song chewer." they are correct.
i put a word in my beak & wait
until it turns into bubblegum.
i spend all afternoon searching
& i do not find the crow or any other birds.
they know i am looking
& so they hide. i cannot blame them.
i would do the same. 
with scissors i cut little holes
in the sky of where i with i could 
witness them. standing back 
from my work, the holes look
like little crescent moons. 

apple pie burial

goodbye to my horse drawn sadness. goodbye
to the pictures of men on my money.
now, i only barter with pigs. 
in the yard we dig a hole the size
of my heart. all the promises if was made
about hunger. "you will always 
be full of flies." pulling up the lid of a can
& finding the eyes of children. in ghost land, 
delicious is a moon with two sides:
shadow & white. i go to the shadow 
with a table spoon. ask if i can measure enough
to make a feast. they moon says,
"to who do you owe your strawberries?"
i walk through a hall of hands. the hands 
turn to carrier pigeons. the carrier pigeons 
turn into tenement windows. my family
spitting their teeth out into a shared bucket.
money is worthless in the world 
of skin & lawns. my mailbox says,
"i thought it was a bank holiday."
i install a zipper where there once
was a door. i call a friend in the dead of night.
hear my observer breathing on the line
behind our chatter about balloons
& escape. i pause my friend to tell the man,
"it is alright, my treason is sadly legal."
i keep a room at the back of my throat 
where there is a single ear of corn.
there i go & consider eating it raw. 
that sweetness in the summer's ragged hair.
tell me, mom, where are we going?
father, the time is running out. 
the moon always swallows itself.
one day, i will dig up the pie 
& we will eat without you.

pursuing zoo

"get out of my water bottle,"
i tell a shark. he is just looking for a place
to take off the weight of searching.
i am too. i go to the zoo & talk to the animals.
one, a wild horse, is the last 
of a pack of horses the zoo once purchased
in the hopes of making them run back & forth.
i buy a hamster wheel & use it 
as a makeshift gut. follow my gut in circles.
my life has taught me, if nothing else,
i am not to be trusted. i once carved
a hole in the wall of my apartment
so i could have a direct line to the angels.
they clip birds wings for their own good.
or so i am told. a hawk without a wild
spends the day doing sudoku & dreaming
of pizza. i consider scaling the fence
of several enclosures. most of all
i think i would like to be an otter. i ask
for their relationship advice & they tell me
i should cut out my tongue & sell it
as a talisman.  this is not the worst suggestion
i have ever heard. the snakes had promised,
"you will lose your limbs one by one."
i look at my hand & find the head
of a zebra. i open my mouth & flamingos 
stand there pinkening. i make a telephone call
to an elephant. i say, "do you think i should?"
he says, "always." how does one acquire an instinct
once it is gone? once it is turned into 
jars of plum jam? i am sweet in the same way 
that microwave pancakes are. enough 
to earn my sugar. not enough to be a species.
i do not know if the zoo is a good place
or a bad one. binaries will always fail us. likewise
i don't know if i live in the zoo or in the wild
or if the wild is also a zoo. i've built
so many cages trying to be your afternoon
& your corndog. you grab me by the taxonomy.
tell me, "i want to see you without bones."

tin fish dinner

here is a video of me when i wasn't hungry.
together we watch the school of fish
as they thrum in my iphone as if they will
never become a bite of salt & olive oil. 
lately, we talk a lot about whether or not
people are good. you watch too much true crime
& i harvest too many inspirational quotes.
once though, when i was sixteen i was alone
in new york city. no one knew where i was 
& i was wearing a blue knit hat & blue lipstick.
a man on the subway stayed with me
until i reached the station. he told me,
"there are more flies than gardens" & i still
have never known what it means. then, of course,
the man who lived above in the mountains.
how, when he made dinner, he would knock
& ask if we were hungry. i was starving. i was 
a single fish remembering what it felt like
to hum in my stewing manhattan august.
i never accepted his food. he smelled like mushrooms
& gasoline. used a walking stick he carved himself.
i am scrolling in the internet's guts
& i start watching videos of tin fish dinners.
a husband & a wife who pry open 
these little gasps of flesh. capers & vinegar.
sun dried tomato. the smallest forks
i've ever seen. we are living in a time of canoes. 
in the kitchen i taste a spoonful of the cabbage 
in gochujang sauce you've made. there are so many kinds
of tin fish dinners. what i loved most about the video
& why i kept returning to it was that
each bite was celebration. i do not want to ever
mistake smallness for emptiness. i don't believe
in good or evil but i do believe in sardines
& anchovies. i believe in the crooked smile
of a tin can. i can measure how far 
the ocean is from us in teeth. 

carry out / carry on

we were eating our portion of the snap pea supply.
cats in the clouds playing their lutes. in the summer
the graveyard was a bed frame. laying down with you
i tried to imagine how we might be possible.
a singular answer always returned in the form of 
stray lighters. we filled our pockets. later, in my next
iteration the same exact scene in which 
outside a restaurant, my mother circled the block
looking for me. i lead a runaway's life. goodbye goodbye.
or else we are just chicken drums. or else i am just
the boy who kisses the bridge before he turns it
into a wrack of ribs. release me from my fork.
release me from my shoe laces. i tie everything 
too tight so they fray quickly. have you ever tried
to relace a disaster? you'll be dizzy & weeping & she
will be asking you, "what do you mean you died?"
we drove home with you still inside a chestnut.
i said, "it hurts when i bite into you." you said,
"well don't bite into me." you don't understand.
i have to lick the plate. i have to walk to the 7/11
& try to feel like a real person. i am told that
if you're extra good in this life there will be laundry machines
in your heaven. if you're like me though, 
you have to walk up the street & kiss someone
who you don't really want to kiss anymore
to be allowed to use a machine. i have spent
too much of my life waiting for water to return.
you point your fork at me. a bird kills another bird
on the roof of our life. "i want to go home," i admit.
you say, "but you haven't finished your snap peas."