Over There by Dani Putney
The queerest thing my father ever did
was bring me, 17, discounted Marlboros
from the commissary. Even with an aperture
of What Men Do & homosexual panic
between us, he understood self-
determination more than many in my own
community. Smoking is control, the rot
I slowly welcome, a reckoning I predetermine.
I, the youngest of 8, was the only one
to fight back, to say goodbye estranged,
to refuse a kiss against Father’s embalmed
face. The greatest risk of living, I’ve learned,
is choosing selfhood. What if I gave “pussy
a chance,” read the Bible laid out
on my teenage nightstand, ate the meat
promised to “make [me] a man”? I fear
I’ve selected beauty over easiness, a gender
a sexuality over kinship. & what I’ve earned
is simply ghost, the not-boy smiling at a man
who can “smell the daddy issues,” the crash-&-
burn that’s always in my back pocket.
I’m trying stillness, the placid waters settling
into my pores, but there’s no arrival at Enough.
All shards without rebirth, a collage
with the severed parts glued over. & I’m learning,
every day, despite the cracks, that survival
is being alive. I accept the well-meaning
platitudes—the “It gets better,” the “You’ll find
somebody”—with a snark-turned-calm-
acknowledgment. I’m not okay, & may never be,
but that’s okay. I think about that 17-year-old,
the mirror pre-shattering, & only feel pride
for them, cigarette in hand, All the King’s Men
in the other. They chose death-with-life
before the great This mattered. & I know,
now, that getting through is to get over.
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 the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, the Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities, and Philippine American Writers and Artists, 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.
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