"It Should Be CDO" and "They/Them Half-Life" – Sierra Nevada Ally
Two poems by Dani Putney
“It Should Be CDO”
Six chocolate squares of anthelmintic
(sold to Australian children) rush-
delivered to my Nevada apartment
is when I know there’s a problem. No,
it’s on my knees—prayer formation—
in front of the toilet, prodding waste
to find escaped proglottids, forty-
niner-style. Or, it’s devouring 3 a.m.
subreddits five nights in a row
(& counting), memorizing parasite
shapes & symptoms like the map
to an unknowable utopia. Pretty
people enjoy saying their penchant
for a neat desk, an organized room,
means they’re so this. I’d be laughing
if I could take a break from analyzing
my anus, head upside-down, full-
length mirror inches away. Maybe
I’d chuckle if I stopped searching
my bed for flea dirt. (I think I found
some! You just place the specks
on a wet paper towel & observe
whether the sheet turns red. Oh,
it didn’t change color.) I wish
it were cute for my orbitofrontal
cortex to misfire. But it makes you
more productive, right? Again,
too busy to respond. Ask me
about the urge mid-meeting to finger
my rectum in case the itch indicates
a pinworm infestation—you might
have my attention then. & yes,
you’re correct, this is all for attention.
My love affair with certainty
is the greatest party trick. In fact,
I’m not crazy at all.
They/Them Half-Life
I fear being left
for a woman, not a man.
Because it’s happened.
Because I’m enough 20
for him to fuck but not enough 80
for him to marry. You’re not like
other guys, or You’re so pretty,
or I want to fuck you in a dress.
At least gay men treat me
like syphilitic insanity,
a glittered ghost they wish
would vaporize, Ew, what’s that?
Instead I get matchbook kisses
from divorcees & storm chasers
who ravish androgyny—a splash
into both without the commitment.
I wonder how personhood feels,
but just call me false dichotomy,
the neon scoreboard across my skin
that determines fuckability.
I’m supposed to enjoy men seeking
my combo of blouse & flat chest,
skirt & black leg hair, but what to do
when the someone glancing back
is the kingpin of fetish objects?
I’m a bi-pan-demi devil’s net.
I scared the last gay man I dated,
What am I if I’m with you? Forever
a question mark, always the codex
to another’s search for self.
It doesn’t matter what I need.
Pick a number between 1 & 100—
I’ll tell you the rate at which my body
becomes anything at all.
Read Max Stone’s feature on Dani in the Reno News and Review:
Dani’s next reading from Mix-Mix is July 9, 6 p.m. at the Radical Cat in Reno, 1500 S. Virginia Street.
Republish our stories for free, under a Creative Commons license.
Dani Putney, Ph.D., 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). 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 personal essays can be found in journals such as Crab Creek Review, Glassworks Magazine, and Quarterly West, among others. They received their Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University and MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women. They live in Reno, Nevada.
Dr. Lori Howe is the co-creator of the new poetic form, the Cadralor, and the founding Editor in Chief of its flagship publication, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor. Since the inception of this non-narrative, imagist poetic form in 2020, the editors at Gleam have published 9 issues (Gleampoets.org), with Issue 10 forthcoming in June, 2025. Lori Howe’s cadralore appear in such journals as Synkroniciti, The Tampa Review, The Meadow, McQueen’s Quinterly, and Verse-Virtual, among others. She is a professor in the Honors College at the University of Wyoming.
Two poems by Dani Putney
A celebration of Latino poetry takes place this weekend in Reno.
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