Reid Kurkerewicz

REJECTED POET BIOS

This next poet has a four-foot vertical leap and publishes work in the Ronkonkoma

Neoliberal Gazette.

This next poet is fighting a debilitating addiction to problematic Goofy Movie yaoi.

This next poet is banned from St. Marks Church for suggesting John Ashberry was a gold

star lesbian.

This next poet won the Young Republicans grant for their chapbook, Property Taxes are

High and So am I.

This next poet believes poetry is a medium of luxury mind control in which upper-class

and middle-class downwardly mobile intellectuals are converted into domestic and international

spies for Nancy Pelosi.

KISSING THEORY [from a novel-in-progress, working title, Sex Without Love]

Kissing goes way back to like even before the Bible.

Jesus and his disciples made out every day, By our standards, which aren’t even that

progressive, we’d freak if a big group of guys did that like at the park.

I remember because before anyone even laughed the bible teacher went it isn’t gay guys it’s just

what they did back then as a sign of love but still we weren’t allowed to say hi that way

even as siblings in Christ since of course we asked why not us.

They were all honourable men locked-in to a death cult.

But one can’t learn kissing from a book or even The Book.

Everyone knows bad kissers but no one says they are one except maybe to your therapists or

closest girl friends.

Not girlfriend but girl friend and only ever as a question.

I can report from guy sleep overs that straight guys absolutely assume they’re all good kissers or

could be given the chance.

Now we see slut is another word for expert.

You only get good at kissing like anything else by doing it a lot and also some are born with it.

But if you aren’t born with it and keep being bad maybe you get worse.

I think I was born with it. I think I’m a slut.

But I only say that because I’ve sworn not to kiss anyone here, by rule of being in the room.

IF you’re in this room now you’ve broken my only rule which is not to be here. Plus at the time of

reading I may have a girl and/or boyfriend, but I want the reading to reflect the time of

writing. So I’m going to go somewhere else to kiss, anywhere but here.

Reid Kurkerewicz is a writer from Wisconsin who lives in Brooklyn. His work appears with Blue Bag Press, Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. His chapbook Man of the Law was published by SLAB.