“A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” is a fragmentary poem that builds its meaning and effect through a series of seven loosely connected stanzas. It is a prose poem, meaning that its text is not arranged in poetic lines, either with a particular metric scheme or in the form of free verse. Instead, its seven segments read like prose paragraphs. Even without meter and rhyme, however, what makes it a poem is a deliberate and complex use of poetic devices—especially figurative language, intricate symbolism, strategic repetition of key images and phrases, and the density of emotion. The poem is lengthy and consists of a series of vivid scenes, ranging from mostly or partially literal to entirely metaphorical.

The speaker refers to himself in the second-person singular (“you”). This is, on the most immediate and literal level, an extension of the poem’s concept as a “primer”; the poem is introducing readers—introducing “you”—to “the Small Weird Loves,” telling readers what they can expect should they experience such loves.

However, the second-person narration surpasses the premise of a primer and builds the speaker’s psychological complexity.