Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, Asian American poet exploring the West. They’re often lost in the kaleidoscope of their intersectional identity. Most recently, their work appears or is forthcoming in The Chaffin Journal, Cold Mountain Review, Noble / Gas Qtrly, and The Shore, among other publications. Presently, they’re infiltrating a small conservative town full of cowboys in the middle of the Nevada desert.



Dani Putney

Milk





I call you Moo-ma because you said I’d grow into a strong cow if I drank my glass. You know the Buddhists worship them? I’ll never forget your hand on my shoulder, circles rubbed into the blade of my interstitial body — it’s okay, moo, don’t rush it. You’ll finish. You knew the milk I spat onto the table wasn’t a color but all the light packed into a single white reflection none of us could escape. When Dad walked by & shook his head, I remembered his chide: Your brothers loved it. They wanted to be men. All I craved was to be his little man / your little moo. If I gulped the toxin, smacked my lips to signal American joy, you wouldn’t look for me in the bathroom, clutching a belly yellow where the white had seeped out. Moo-ma, look at the scars along my intestines where every glass cut me. Tell me I’m still worthy of worship.


I wrote “Milk” to explore a trauma I didn’t recognize I’d experienced until recently. When I was younger, drinking milk seemed like the right thing to do — all my white friends loved it, and my parents convinced me I’d be tall and strong, like an American boy, if I drank it. But I didn’t know I was lactose intolerant, nor that my mom was as well. Why, then, was she pushing me so much to drink milk? This poem is a meditation on (1) the complicated emotions I feel about my milk-laden past and (2) my parents, one white and the other Asian, who both seemed to agree that a substance my body couldn’t stomach was best for me.



Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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