You Can't Choose Your Family

Great concept. I thought the blunt tone was executed very well throughout. I'm a huge fan of short but (bitter)sweet pieces like these. In my opinion, if there's anything that could use some work it would be some descriptors. I think you missed an opportunity with "trained them like inmates". I think it might convey the meaning better with "broken" instead of trained. That way there's wordplay with the previous line and it matches the tone of the overall piece. Also maybe with respect to the trash bag, you could flesh that part out more comparing it to the womb. Good work

This is wonderful, it all came to life so quickly. A single scene played out in my head. The part about fitting he body in the trash bag, is this because so much turkey we already consumed? Lol. I pictured my family during this

What a lovely scene, saturated in malice. Even the line 'modern Joan Crawford Thanksgiving.' has a certain dark undertone to it, and I don't even have any idea who this 'joan' woman is! and then there's the body bags and the inmates and the butterball fitness blog - Personally I wouldn't change a word, you've hit a rich seam. The tone comes across perfectly and it's worth re-read after re-read.

Not a bad poem at all. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say with certain parts though. Mainly the last two verses.

I usually don't talk about what I like in poems these days but I think in order to talk about what I don't like, I have to mention what works.

First and foremost this is a actually on its way to become a publishable poem. If you put some hours and elbow grease into this thing the tone and length makes me think of the content in Rattle (a quarterly poetry magazine).

Besides the title of this poem, which is somewhat unclear, I like that the speaker seems to have some kind of outside observation of this family. The speaker feels really out of place and extraneous in this sleek, modern family. I'm guessing the speaker is participating in thanksgiving against his/her will and that really comes out in the tone. The tone that contributes to this sense of alienation out otherness is the penultimate stanza. "dessert is a currency here" - which implies that the speaker is not "from here". This is exactly what it needs to be and doesn't need to be emphasized anymore. More like this tone needs to be protected in future edits.

I like that almost every stanza (besides the last one) ends in some kind of reference to a colloquialism.

I like the economy here. It's narrative but it's not ecumbered by words that don't need to be there (ex. "Shove the leftover bird" instead of "She shoved the leftover turkey"). Since my mind does the work to fill in these gaps, I have more investment in the images themselves.

Now on to what I don't like :

1. The first line. I don't like that it has quotes, I don't like that it's an answer to a question that is not obvious from the context of the poem. It also doesn't seem to do much characterization of what I assume is the Mother. We get implications that she's self-obsessed, controlling, etc - I'd like to get a little more of that in this line.

2. the lopsided visual similarity of "there" in stanza 2 and "here" in stanza 3 definitely threw me off. I wanted to make a connection but ultimately wasted my time.

3. the very last stanza. The observation and analogy at the end of stanza 3 is actually a great way to end the poem. I don't care if you edit or move the last stanza but I don't like it as an ending. If you want to make the point that she's false, corporate, and has monetized her social life then you might start with that instead of end with it.

Christ her children are hard, she's trained them like inmates, and the bit about the bird being shoved into the garbage are both incredible lines/images.

My only criticism is that there's room to unpack these images before jumping to the next.

Great poem

I got so disappointed when it wasn't ABA on the second line.

Clean and Thanksgiving kinda rhyme. Try running with it. Make it kick.