Reid Kurkerewicz
RENUNCIATE DISTRACTIONS
Like O! to mix your cheapest tequila and High Life
and forget to drive home.
to know I lost what aches me.
yet Society supports me on humble breasts,
welcomes me, even. I'm popular.
My Allies span weights and measures.
we can eat cherries
and lay down on the lawn,
whistle a tune,
tread dirt,
claw my holy shirt
but confessionals are topsy riddles
your dumb is your usual
and you buy frogs when geese are in
the gutter, the flock severs for you like a cloud
severs the baby blue white black orange pink sky
and your delight is on you today
and you have not fruit tomorrow
that you have for now.
I like my friends like I like my gold -
quantifiable according to sample density.
I remember where I was, but I won't go back.
––––
AFTER MICHAEL HUDSON
It's cold enough to jump into no end of what's wrong with me.
I yank at my tumors. Rub old surprises.
Toddlers loudly ruminate where I go to think.
I don't recognize one city,
colleagues who forget me who I hated,
friends who remember I forget.
Dry crusted exposition, expensive sinuses, affordable studies.
All for seven beers and fried pork on white bread?
Cause yourself enough pain to never waste my time again.
Where's the efficient elegance?
The blowback blowback?
Will anyone ever be right?
I'd give four months of a leg for the forest behind my house.
Shoot me in my pencil, mechanical attention to macro issues.
I must return to work.
I'm close to the center.
Look how long the introduction
and how middling the body
and how glorious the takes.
The seven senses eliminate the non-human.
Only the blind vote in international elections.
Who is your nominee for secretary to the International Monetary Fund?
I want a locally obscure DJ in Germantown. His heroin habit is a non-issue
in regards to his handling of loans.
There'd be basically similar outcomes except I'd be personally enriched, which would benefit all present.
I've thought about this more than you have —
the interlocking forces surrounding the context and modal control of my toes
where I bend the big one to disengage it and autonomously swivel the middle ones and even the final toe
to confirm my singular ingenuity.
We aspire to match savings.
even a wholesale regurgitation of the modern's welcome.
Who are all these people? What did they sign up for?
Are you going to kill anyone? Are you going to let murders chill?
What's your favorite joke?
You shouldn't have to answer for the works of your feet.
I overworked my capacity to sleep.
Do you watch winners work, birds harass?
Seal the ceiling of your power level.
Language Unleashed
Phoenix Workbook Level Three.
You've enough experience to relax
what already sleeps.
The kind have had enough of themselves.
And the sly devise luxuries to sacrifice important limbs.
Limits, I call them. I could stretch to the sandbank and back.
Weakness tends to forget. I'm trembles.
––––
THE NATION FACE
Survivor of the dentist
lobby, saw the whole economy
in half w/ ur face.
Wrap presents in futures contracts
coined Circadian and Maybelline.
Perform epidermis skip
during national perfection any%.
Upper-case I "isms" like dogs
hide bones but never joy.
Learn Stockpile, Swallow and Spit Up
for the constitution buff.
The fine prince attacks a shitty state
with visible hands.
––––
Reid Kurkerewicz is a writer from Wisconsin who lives in Brooklyn. His writing appears in the Brooklyn Rail, DreamBoy Book Club, and elsewhere. His chapbook Man of the Law was published by SLAB.