Claudia Putnam lives in Western Colorado, where she has a small craniosacral therapy practice. Her fiction appears in Cimarron Review, Sunspot Lit, phoebe, bosque, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has previously appeared in The Write Launch. Her debut collection, The Land of Stone and River, won the Moon City Press poetry prize and should be out by the end of 2021. A long personal essay, Double Negative, won the Split/Lip Press CNF chapbook prize and is forthcoming in March 2022. She's had a few residencies, including The Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, and most recently at Hypatia-in-the-Woods.
Path of Service
For years after her divorce, Fay had trouble referring to her husband by name. My husband, she would say, and then eventually, my ex-husband. Doesn’t he have a name, newer friends or colleagues would ask, laughing, and she would relent. Desmond. Des, she would make herself think. Des, Des, Des.
The archangel hadn’t asked for his name. No name had come up between them that day in the mineral pool under the high Colorado sky Read more.
“Reading Octavio Paz”
Midnight
between
Mexico City and the highlands
the night
spun
into deep velvet
air so dense I couldn’t understand
how we could pass
Read more.