Sound

He wraps his arms around my waist
in front of the boiling pot. Sturdy,
the hands of an Irish mother,
our obstetrical instruments shaving
down their own bacteria. I think about
legacies, the parents in us, the same
escapes we fail until, somehow,
it all locks in place. What lies
our bodies tell. He taught me
to butcher, the biggest irony. I tell him
I’m an abattoir perfumed in Shiseido.
Of course he doesn’t understand—
I, more than most, understand the limits
of metaphor. I’d walk any stricture
to find him, my life converted
into a Celsius ball, the 100 degrees
only fillable by five-letter name.
He has the tools—towels,
unguent, joie de vivre.

                                    We sit
naked from ourselves, backs
to my adult headboard, a graduation
of monochrome to Technicolor life.
Nothing can capture the ache
in one’s gut, the yearning replicated
in laboratories of rapid-fire
synapses. As he drops into me,
metal pulsating against soft tissue,
I close my eyes & contemplate
anastomosis. Love feels cognate
with that truer connection, surgery,
the cutting of oneself to meet another
halfway. Or maybe this is why
I’ve never known reciprocation. I try
to conjure vacuity, structure
limitless: pain as living—prick,
the bee’s kiss.

                       I can’t
remember when I’ve gotten more
attention. This is what I miss most.
Anointed with steel, I am the muse,
en finale, if only brief. The lips against
my base, the slow-motion cycle
of up & down, catch & release.
The elicited smirk, the knowing
he knows he’s undone me. But where
to go once unraveled? I’ve led
myself here, the dissipating spark,
the joke I. Absence of you,
simply a man who misplaced him-
self. I’m confident another &
another & another—they’ve felt it,
too. In the after, yes, all wreckage
with no sound.

Author of the article

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, and neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. They are the author of Half-Off Boys (Baobab Press, forthcoming 2027), Mix-Mix (Baobab Press, 2025), and Salamat sa Intersectionality (Okay Donkey Press, 2021), finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. They are also the author of the poetry chapbook "Dela Torre" (Sundress Publications, 2022) and the creative nonfiction chapbook "Swallow Whole" (Bullshit Press, 2024), and they have received support for their work from Nevada Humanities, the Nevada Arts Council, the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, among other organizations. Their poetry appears in outlets such as Bennington Review, Cream City Review, Foglifter, Grist, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Puerto del Sol, among others, while their creative nonfiction can be found in journals such as Crab Creek Review, Glassworks Magazine, Quarterly West, and So to Speak, among others. They received their PhD in English from Oklahoma State University and MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women and live in Reno, Nevada.