Poetry is queer really, just by nature.

Thanks to a book club, I've encountered this odd little book. Once I started it, I really wasn't sure it was my jam. But it really became my jam and I sped through it in one sitting.

I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain by Will Walton is both prose and poetry with Avery as our guide. It's as much dealing with grief as it is trying to figure things out, as a teen who is gay and wants to have sex with his best friend. With a mother who is an alcoholic. A grandfather, Pal, who drinks and then creates this hole that has to be filled.

Avery is trying to make sense of his grief in losing his grandpa, while dealing with everything else. And the everything else is, frankly, A LOT. We jump around between past and present, prose and poetry, lists and scattered thoughts. If you can keep up, you can go deep into the ride of Avery's thoughts and emotions.

Honestly, grief stays right below the surface. Eleven years have passed since I lost my dad and I still speak in present tense sometimes. It bubbles up out of nowhere at the most innocuous thing. Watching Avery try to work through his grief at Pal's death brought up emotions that I didn't expect to see. 

This isn't your ordinary book. Dive in, but don't expect a linear path.

The title of the book is from an Emily Dickinson poem:

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -