Hi! I'm judging the poetry round of "The LGBT Writing Contest - now judging"  for July 2015, and I figured that I better get a review out to everybody.


Favorite Aspects

The humor hits pretty often. I've read a whole lot of your work now, thanks to the "30 Day Image Prompt Contest - CLOSED" , and I've become pretty familiar with your style and sense of humor.

Language / Word Choice

The opening two lines do paint a different image of "hot" than what you end up doing. Cute.

The "kish" is one of the more amusing bits as well.

Flow / Rhythm

The flow is definitely questionable at times. The stanzas themselves have their own contained flow, but from one to the next, it is completely rough. For example:

"So much slipping and sliding, there was no use hiding
And all the participants finally met.

That they already knew each other was surprising"

That is a pretty painful transition there. Very awkward.

Technical / Grammar / Syntax

It seemed incredibly odd to me to introduce the character(s) in the 4th stanza. It's like they were an after thought (and so was the whole "story"). Cory went to a park. That's it... no characterization. The other unnamed guys had more personality than the one you named, which is decidedly strange.

There is also a complete disconnect between the first three stanzas and those that follow. You tried to tie them together, but it still felt like two different poems stuck together. The type of humor seemed to change there as well as the narrative style. Suddenly, the humor was more clever than silly.

The last stanza reads like a cop out to me. Like... there was just no way to tie a disjointed poem together other than saying, "this is hard, and I don't want to write more"? It's sort of cute but not satisfying.

Effect

For me, the effect was... meh. It's alright. Some of the humor speaks to me (the clever jokes and word play) and some of it definitely doesn't (wrapped in toilet paper? what?). The poem does not feel cohesive. The intro seems to be too long to really connect with or serve as a setup for the "story". In general, I think that comedy can be difficult unless you hit a particular note and stick with it. Say, entirely clever word play or entirely random silliness rather than a mix of the two. Anyway, good luck in the contest.



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .