Dissonance

by Dani Putney

Dan Starkey

I want to behold him in nothing but boots and Cattleman, sunburnt skin brined, dirty-blond chest hair reflected in blue porch light. I want to lap salt off forearms, chew scar-decorated shoulders, tongue dead-celled neck. I need to inhale grass and dirt and dirt and dirt.

He doesn’t need to talk —  I don’t want to hear about horses and guns and women. I want him to shove me against ranch-house stucco, rub hardness into my soft city mind. Callused knuckles speak a common language: the wilderness, the forgotten metropolis.

---

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, Asian American poet exploring the West. Their poetry most recently appears in Brushfire Literature & Arts, Juke Joint Magazine, and Red Eft Review. Presently, they’re infiltrating a small conservative town in the middle of the Nevada desert.