While I did enjoy quite a few of the poems, I feel like maybe I'm not the right audience for this type of work. I can appreciate the energy that went into creating this collection.

Publishing date: 30.08.2024
Thank you to Netgalley and Querencia Press for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

The book as a meal: Girl dinner (but it is almost midnight and I am snacking on cheese and dry crackers)
The book left me: Dazed

Negatives:
Some poems were hitters, most were misses

Positives:
Mixed media (I love it)
Zoomer references and content allowed me to connect easier

Features:
Free form poetry, zoomer/doomer content, old school tv breaks, two books in one, multi-media

Why did I choose this one?
This looked like a fascinating read from the cover. The combo of LGBTQIAP and poetry is also usually up my ballpark

Pick-up-able? Put-down-able?
Pick-Up-Able. This is a short read and the poems are just as short. Finished it in about an hour / hour and a half

What was the vibe and mood?
This felt a lot like someone slowly finding their place in a large and confusing world that is ever changing and resisting you.

Final ranking and star rating?
2 stars, D tier. As much as I liked the few poems I liked, this was more of a miss than a hit. A lot of the formatting and language here was both confusing and hard to properly process. The ideas and themes presented to me should have resulted in a big hit, but it didn't turn out that way.
I know of some that do love these types of free-form poems, and I think I will pass this collection to them

Favorite poems:
gestures broadly at everything
the physical exam, or an erasure?
computer reboot session with a dose of sensory deprivation

A collection of two seperate poetry and prose chapbooks focusing on internet age culture, trauma, and the relationship with the self. It's a fresh take on free form poetry that I enjoyed reading. The form was well executed; a break away from the norm that didn't lean into the utterly inscrutable. I'm ususally impressed with most titles from Querencia Press and I'm happy to say this didn't break my streak.

My favorites from this collection are: "do not resucitate", "THE VACATION scene 2: MYRTLE BEACH VACTION, NEXT YEAR", and "are you an internet cryptid? (as told by your tweets)."

Thank you, NetGalley for an advanced ARC of this book

As I was reading it I took a few poems a day but it didn't hit me like it had others, I do see the beauty hidden in the words and the different styles but a few of the styles didn't work for me.

I believe I was the wrong audience for this or maybe I read it at the wrong time

this was a really interesting, unique and thought provoking collection of poetry which i really enjoyed! i didn’t fully understand some of it, but that’s okay - i’m not sure i was meant to.

my favourite pieces were:
* gestures broadly at everything
* is this analog horror or another nightmare?
* triangulation
* temporal celebrity
* mirrorself
* the interview
* the vacation (scene 3)
* you never said your favorite color is green?
* is your favorite color blue or are you just sad to see me / each time you go battery saver mode.
* do you yearn for oblivion like children yearn for the mines?
* do you wish to know what you are looking for?
* computer reboot method with a dose of sensory deprivation

thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-arc :)

DITCHLAPSE/ [REALLY AFRAID] is a collection of poetry and one act plays exploring growing up, modern social media, trauma and mental health.
DITCHLAPSE mainly collects poetry, often using modern tiktok slang and exploring certain online trends, which I quite enjoyed. It explores certain online subcultures and seems to be more focussed on the author's recent/more current experiences.
My favorite pieces from Ditchlaps where "you say i'm delulu for explaining levels of dissaciation (b-movie titled "inside me, there are two wolves")", "you approach as the average person is a self-directing credit?" (including the wonderful line: "crying without tears is so clearpilled and angelgirl chique, like how could anyone think you did anything?"), the "interruptions" called "infomercial as the moment", exploring ads and existing online and "*~tommy's room~* as a TikTok live" (which felt very We're All Going to the World's Fair).
I did enjoy this first part of the book, but I didn't feel blown away yet. It was interesting poetry and some pieces definitely made very interesting use of words, but it hadn't yet fully touched me. [REALLY AFRAID] would change that.
[REALLY AFRAID] features some pieces that are connected and thus allow us to spend more time with certain thoughts, and the pieces features are exploring Tommy Wyatt's growing up, dissociation, trauma and identity.
The media referenced here was often horror, which made it a lot more interesting to me and some of the pieces will stick with me for a long time. I also enjoyed that some different forms of presenting poetry were employed here, such as making use of text overlaid over other text and a lot of empty space sometimes, which was very interesting to read.
My favorites here were "lachrymoe//lacuna, a series of one-act plays review of THE VACATION. A REVIEW FOR FANS OF SKINAMARINK (dir. Kyle Edward Bell), AND NON_FANS OF BUFFY: THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (dir. Joss Whedon), VERTIGO (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), & SLEEPAWAY CAMP (dir. Robert Hiltzik).", "The Vacation scene 1", "happy valentines day? love, schadenfreude", "are you an internet cryptic? (as told by your tweets)", "hey, have you ever considered the word "rewind" may drop from the next generation's lexicon", "you never said your favorite color is green?", "the physical exam, or an erasure?" + "the physical exam, or the interpretation", "wow! this could be a david firth video!", "the future as an omen" and "self-help guide to understanding dissociative identitiy disorder once you reached crisis mode. who are you: tommy, kyle or josha?".
As you can probably see from this long list of pieces I enjoyed I really, really enjoyed [REALLY AFRAID] and Tommy's writing style which managed to paint a vivid picture for most of the pieces. The growing up it portrays feels both nostalgic at points and yet so incredibly modern through its combination of some memories that seem to be from before the big technology change really arrived in everybodies hands vs the tiktok generation now. I really enjoyed seeing that dichotomy presented.
All in all this is a very intruiging collection of poetry and one I will be thinking about for a while.

TW: dissociation, self-harm, sleep paralysis, nightmares and night terrors