Kevin
I thought we created
a constellation out of Mango
Carts & Fireball shots Tuesday
night. You, me, & the cowboy
bikers shooting pool for what—
pride? the women at their backs?
I turn back & you declare
I’m a bottom, as if you browsed
the galaxies of my trauma.
Your last name, a town legend.
My olive scars, a quarry
to plunder. Did anyone tell you
to shut up while you’re hot?
Poppers in,
you pass out with your hand
on my groin like you own
my past. I want you to kiss
the nightstand sleeping pills
into me, but you’re already gone.
I guess I am, too. I stay
out of what—respect? the warmth
at my neck? I can never lose
us because I’m an archive
of yous. That & the collection
of bite marks trickling down
my spine. I try to sleep
but won’t turn away:
your body, aflame.
West
This valley has died 1,000 times.
Quemado, now. What grows
is amoeba after amoeba, thickets
of post-life. A boy fingers his way
through ersatz soil to find
nothing. He cries. Bearded vultures
hide burnt bones in their manes,
no pecking order except death.
Can you hear them? Firestorms
gathering between mountainside
detritus. The kaleidoscope of past.
Hope fled years ago, see? I stand
among derelict shacks, children
too poor to leave it all behind.
I’m one of them, in a way.
I don’t want to escape, prefer
disaster to cleanliness. A skeleton
full of aftershock. No water
in these joints. So yes, I pray.
For bodies to outlive a history.
For life to scatter in the dust.
Each sprout of brush is a wish,
here. & I’m not collapsed.
1,000 Years of Dirt
Ole Clubfoot was killed the morning of November 18. On my Saturday hikes outside town I’d keep a lookout for him, checking to see that he was still hobbling along. I swear that stud would smile at me every time. The BLM has been rounding up wild horses in the herd areas near Ely. They say this range doesn’t meet “the criteria for maintaining a thriving ecological balance.” I’ve lived here my whole life & not once thought anything could survive except those stubborn enough to call the Great Basin home. Clubby was an ornery one. Eight mustangs have been euthanized since last week for problems like severe tooth loss or a missing eye. The eleven years Clubby was alive, he was grazing on that clubbed back foot a solid six. Mercy, they said. I wonder if the BLM will save any more. We’ve had wild horses since my father’s time & his father’s time. Our watershed has seen all kinds of life over the years, a lot longer than the BLM’s existed for. I don’t blame them for trying to protect the range, but I can’t tell what’s science. All I know is this land has history. My family’s moved away from here—college, city jobs, seeing the world—but the mustangs & I have an agreement: We grow old, the desert cycles around us. Clubby was going to retire with me. If I’m lucky I’ll die in this basin, too.
Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, & neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. Their debut collection, Salamat sa Intersectionality (Okay Donkey Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. They’re also the author of the poetry chapbook Dela Torre (Sundress Publications, 2022).