disneyland

Hmm This a unique piece, if i do say so myself. Its interesting as to how i get the idea you are trying to portray over here but i honestly feel that it would be better to Maby extend the poetry a bit more. Not that i don't like short poems, but i feel like it would help you better portray the feelings u are trying to represent here. Also i feel like its a good idea to go back and look at you previous literary pieces once in while thinking as to how you would have improved it if you had the chance to improve it now. Hope this helps even a bit.

I wish you would have given some direction of what feedback you want? That makes it always a bit easier

Sometimes I feel so uncultured, I don't understand why the name of the poem is disneyland @.@

I like the idea of casting off a deadname into a skin of someone. It feels very visceral. Also is the lyrical narrator apologizing bc they need medicine or to the medicine? <-- as I said, very uncultured.

hi willow - welcome to YWS!

So, of course, there is a very sensual tone to this poem that cannot be ignored, but for my purposes, I don't actually think it offers much to your message. The verb knifeplayed (a neologism! how fun is that!) immediately establishes this tone of transgression and sensationalized violence - intentionally so - but I don't think it has a real foundation yet. You can write a poem about intimacy and a poem about violence, but it is delicate to balance the two of them in a poem that RESPECTS both sides of those, as they tend to pendulate rapidly between "mature representation of a relationship" and "romanticization of violence/toxicity in a relationship." There is no escaping any of that aspect of life (and it is deeply poetic to some), but you have to confront the why behind those poetics being so DEEP in relation to how people emotionally digest them.

^ Though, to bat for it (because it is a very unique image that should be expanded upon), it also literalizes what so many trans writers describe metaphorically: the inability to separate body from language/pain from recognition. By carving the "dead name," itself already a grave marker, into someone else’s skin, you make identity something transferrable, or infectious even. That is very beautiful - it is a personal, indescribable manner in which you tell the story of your (or the narrator's) journey to understand gender! That will always have a space in poetry.

Then comes the pivot: "prozac and lurasidone." This list is almost medicinally banal, but I don't think it narratively suits where the first stanza was heading. It IS, though, brilliant in its juxtaposition: after all that mythic self-harm and symbolic violence, you introduce this everyday vocabulary of psychiatry. Antidepressants themselves are actually quite poetic from some perspectives. People take supplements to increase the serotonin in their bodies (a quite literal thing which can be metaphorized in ANY direction, really), and here, there is no real "wiggling" around the reality of such. I think honesty is where this poem shines, especially within that last stanza. I do, however, wish it was its own poem, or at least, expanded on in a few more lines. Is the narrator comparing themselves to the drugs, or are they comparing the person this is directed at (a lover? ex-lover) to the drugs, or is it just a throwaway line for the fun of it? I can't make it out.

I started to feel unsure how this was meant to be perceived, but the title led me to a realization. Disneyland connotes artificial happiness, capitalist childhood nostalgia, the glittering veneer of escapism, etc... all of which violently clash with the self-destructive intimacy of the content that follows. That contrast is what I believe to be the "intention" behind this: to point out some flaw, or hypocrisy, within our society/within humans themselves. At least, on a more microcosmic level between what I imagine to be two people that are rather close. Love, or whatever emotion is running through this poem, will always have that feeling surface eventually. It is just a matter of fully seeing the other side of things.

I do like this poem though! Thematically, it sits in the lineage of confessional poetry (where it rightfully belongs!), but I am not sure it follows through with the actual confession part. Beef it up! I would honestly say to lean into the identity side of things if you were to explore this again.

best,
floodlights