kendrick came on shuffle the second i touched down in LA. this feels like a positive omen for AWP

sorry this is wild 😭😭😭😭

meta is pushing me to chat with AI narcissist therapist or AI egg :/

Are You Trying to Get Pregnant l ari b. cofer once, at nineteen, before gerald and i could afford Plan B, i took seven birth control pills and almost passed out on the walk home. gerald carried me up the stairs and tucked me into bed. if i were ever to get pregnant, i would have wanted it to have been in that moment, in the texas pressure cooker heat, on my twin-sized bed. i would have asked him to fuck me again, this time, for real, because i would have loved being a parent if all it meant to be a mother was to love someone enough to carry them home.

new poem out with anodyne mag — would love if people stopped the “when are you having babies” question so i can stop saying “i can’t” 🙂‍↕️

rly wanna watch the perks of being a wallflower tonight but that feels like self harm

a screenshot of the poem “if i see the priest now, maybe forgiveness can help me forget” by ari b. cofer, published in everscribe magazine

new piece out today with Everscribe Magazine 🫶🏽

what a life we’ve lived, what a love we’ve made

ten years of being in love with my valentine

a photo collage of quotes and other images of friends together from pinterest

In WHAT ABOUT FRANKIE?, Naomi finds a platonic soulmate in the boy next door until circumstance forces the two to grow up, grow without, and decide if history is enough to continue to grow together.

☀️ Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret x We Are All So Good at Smiling
☀️ Black/queer rep
#questpit

apply!!!

🥹

it is not easy!!! i still catch myself sometimes

it’s wild to finally have the confidence to say that i am proud of the things i write. like, i am loving my work lately. turns out not making self deprecating jokes every hour does in fact help :/

i will have sex with anyone who is nice to me (+ other concerning things i’ve told my therapist), + your weekly poem/song

read it here:

Before I understood the gravity of someone else's touch, sex was something of a game to me. In undergrad, the boys in the dorm across the street had a list of places they hoped to fuck before the end of the year, and I was more than happy to help them meet their goals. In the bookstore parking garage? Check. On a piano in the music hall practice rooms? I'll deny it. In the chapel? Couldn't ever get past the chaplain.

I've spent a lot of time unpacking why it felt like the first time I had autonomy over my body was when it was praised by a man who, if I'd met him just one year earlier, would have been considered a predator. Sex can be a way to reclaim your body in the same way that it can be a quick way to lose it. Looking back, it feels like I achieved both that day — I allowed myself to feel good, and I was consumed entirely by a man who wanted something young and vulnerable.

I think a lot about my 18-year-old self, who wanted nothing more than to be wanted and would patiently wait for anyone who asked them to. There was a fine line between liberation and self-harm, between pleasure and danger. For all the experiences that I consented to, I can't say I regret them. It was fun to feel something, to let someone feel my body, and to help others feel something because of what my body could do. But today, sometimes I still feel sore from the work it took to walk that tightrope and not fall onto the wrong side of the bed. I kiss my husband and my friends and remind myself that it is okay to give myself to others as long as I remember to keep parts of myself for myself, too.

wrote about my relationship to sex over on substack + how complicated it can be when hypersexuality mixes with depression. sometimes it’s hard talking ab this stuff but i also know it is so so important to be honest ab it

agree 1000%

when leonard cohen wrote “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” do you think he knew that was a bar. like do you think he sat back and was like yeah this fucks

I have a little plea and it's this: please keep posting about things that aren't The Horrors. I am not saying to not look at or be informed about The Horrors. What I am saying—what I am genuinely kind of begging you to do—is keep posting about books and movies and sunsets and pets and joy. Please.

It Is MLK Day. Do Not Despair. This Year Especially, We Have Work To Do. With delicious anticipation, we imagined it.

My MLK day piece is up.
open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

i am capital B Begging Submittable to make an app like please give me an easier way to be strange and obsessive about my open submissions

thought i was having normal gentle morning reading time but now Sally Rooney has me unreasonably h*rny and deeply emotional at 7:49am. i thought intermezzo was about chess and grief but this nerd is making me sweaty and also curious about the human condition (?)

thank you so much for reading ♥️♥️

also new in Shō Poetry Journal —

new poem in @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social 💕

thank u !!!

one of my friends that came to graduation is a professional photographer and she took pics of me on campus the day before graduation 🥲🥲

a photo of poet ari b. cofer on the baylor university campus in their graduation regalia

a photo of poet ari b. cofer on the randolph college campus in their graduation regalia

2017 (BA) // 2025 (MFA) 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

congrats to you too!!!

i got my masters degree

(ari b. cofer, mfa 🙂‍↕️)

my favorite thing about poets is that someone can read an instruction manual and you’ll hear at least 3 poets in the back going “mmmmmm…”