Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, and neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. They are the author of 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. They are a senior technical editor and team lead for an environmental, engineering, and architectural consulting firm and live in Reno, Nevada.

James

​

My cock pulsing your throat,
you mutter

∴ again: the moment you ask
Can I kiss you? at White House,
our skin smoking under mountainous
twilight, seconds before I’d planned
to say the same, our lips synchronized,
my handkerchief brushing your neck
as you thumb your way down my spine,
can I sit on your lap until we go numb,
where does this end & begin

∴ again: when you cuddle my dog
in our bundle of sweat, cum, & piss,
baby-talking in anaphora, Sweet boy,
Sweet boy, yes, I stroke your face, fur
between us, I can hear the thunder
on your tongue, its blaze scarred
across my every pore, do you taste it
in my quivers, in the narrative bursting
from my marrow

∴ again: we can’t stop eyeing
each mouthful of pizza & sandwich
gliding into our stomachs, a ritual,
the electricity waltzing around
our pilsners, what a shame I can’t
devour you in this gastropub, give
the waitress a show, a thrust, thrust,
release along the ebony booth,
oh, how bodies keep the score

∴ again: my fists balled into your back
hair, you sigh This is the best sex
I’ve ever had, & I’m disintegrating
not because of the honeyed words
but, rather, the call & response of it all,
I feel it, too, what a little haven
we’ve forged, the entropy of wounds
continents apart united in a dust storm,
the joy of two cuts bleeding alike

​

∴ again: your dick deep inside me,
our scent consuming the patio,
You make me crazy, you whisper,
& I fall backward into our synthesis,
this must be what Hegel meant,
I listen to my bones crack & rebuild,
structures erecting, I see a graveyard
in your eyes, the who I was long lost
to who we’re becoming

∴ the water I kiss into your mouth,
your body strapped to the bed, floral
blindfold dampening the explosions
in your irises, I know I’ll never be
helpless, here, a reinvention of pleasure,
everywhere, our touch defying inertia,
if the recursion never began, where
will it cease, all we have is sound,
that unrelenting wave         again

​

Dani has always been my name

After Robin Walter​

​

No, actually

I uttered it &

it became. Dead /

legal / given // or maybe

thrust as in time’s halberd

              across my clavicle.

It’s funny when we own

our narratives. Like,

who am I to write self

on this spatial fabric?

I’ve wished small deaths

too many times to deserve

reflexivity, e.g., the -growth

the --confidence, the ---la la love.

Maybe, though, it can be real.

Maybe, though, it’s always been,

just like the shards of soul scattered

throughout the cosmos reconstituted

             in this queerest little body.

Super, as in soo-pear, as in Dani

:: Dah-knee :: but swiftly, da-da-da.

Call me babaylan, call me kuya,

say finally home.