Acrylic on Canvas
By: Dani Putney
If I’m precocious, it’s because I love
to flirt with my own interment. I know
this life is tenuous, an unpredictability.
I’ve always read grades ahead
or danced with scholars’ theories
before I lived any life. Ask me when
I first fucked & I’d be embarrassed
to answer. (Maybe being a slut
makes up for those early years.) I think
when people proclaim I’m an old soul
they mean a mass graveyard.
To be me, truly, means a reaper’s
waltz. Not to be melodramatic,
but I have the back pain & acid
reflux to prove it. I try to surround
myself with the living, folks in their 50s
still trekking unabashed. I wonder
what that feels like. If only I didn’t
waste years in the closet. If only
I didn’t let men who were 3s
or 4s call me exotic & then sleep
with them. I was raised to give
everybody, even the walking
dumpster fires, the benefit
of the doubt. But when did anybody
look at me & whisper behind my ear,
I see you? I try not to be too depressed
because I’ve been told I can be too
depressing, but I can’t fathom
a wholeness others seem to grasp
with uncomplicated ease. Yes,
I realize this is pathetic. I didn’t
imbibe Plath as a teenager & imagine
I was as colorful as a Ginsberg grito.
Just read this & say I’m beautiful.
Because I must be. I must.
Can you believe me?
Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, and neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. Their debut full-length collection, Salamat sa Intersectionality (Okay Donkey Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. Mix-Mix, their second full-length poetry collection, is forthcoming from Baobab Press. They're also the author of the poetry chapbook Dela Torre (Sundress Publications, 2022) and the creative nonfiction chapbook Swallow Whole (Bullshit Press, 2024). They received their PhD in English from Oklahoma State University and their MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women. They live in Reno, Nevada.X | IG | WEBSITE