Young Writers Society

The poem could use some improvement in terms of flow. The poem read pretty choppy - like the poem "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish" where the reader pauses at the end of each line - I'd suggest instead of looking at a poem as a bunch of divided lines, start with narrative, and then see how you can fit that narrative into interesting succinct lines.

For instance instead of dividing each line into a complete different thought like you did here:

I am Weird

I am strange

I am Queer

That will never change

They call me weird,
see me as strange,
because I'm Queer and
some things never change.

The short fragments of the poem (as in separated parts) really shows the reader into the life of the speaker. It is such a highly talked about thing because people think it's a problem. Being 'queer' is no problem, it's like anything else in the world. People thinking being 'queer' defines a person. How you write it makes it known that the speaker is 'queer' but it doesn't define him/her. It's quite obvious that it's something the speaker often thinks about and affects them in many ways. How you describe everything makes the reader see through the speaker's eyes. It's pretty great how you can do that. Really great job, I will be reading more.

-From your friend,
PlainandSimple -

I like that you chose to capitalize "Queer" rather than treat it as any other improper noun. This capitalization decision does a lot to emphasize the fact that this poem is so heavily focused on this one aspect of the speaker's identity -- they are not necessarily defined by it, but it plays a significant enough role in their life that it's become such a huge part.

The ending hits very hard, in my opinion, because of your decision to use past tense. The speaker is still queer, but they're no longer around -- this part of their identity has outlived their physical time on earth. I thought it was very interesting and powerful that you chose to use "am" rather than "was" in the last stanza when referring to "Queer".

Suggestions:

- I would remove the period at the end of the third to last stanza; I'm not sure if it was intentional or just a typo, but you abstain from using any punctuation throughout the rest of the poem (which I like), so putting a period at the end of just one line stood out a lot and kind of disrupted the rhythm of the poem.

- Consider using stronger imagery. The poem itself is very powerful as is, but I feel like we could get an even stronger sense of emotion emanating off of the speaker's state of mind and situation if we had some more intense language to really solidify the way they're feeling.

- I believe you meant to write "silenced" rather than "silence" at the beginning of the second to last stanza (just a small thing I figured I'd point out).

Overall I enjoyed this poem and though I can't identify with our speaker very much in terms of this particular situation, I commend you for conveying what it really is like to be ostracized as a result of your identity.

I hope this review was helpful and write on! <3