ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
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.
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.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
