Selected Poetry

Kirk's MFA thesis, First the Blade, was a finalist for the 2022 Jake Adam York Prize, and was awarded Outstanding Graduate Thesis for Southern Illinois University-Carbondale for 2017 under the title Sugar, Rust, Bone. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award.

Bat City Review: "A Too-Late Apology to Miss South Carolina Teen USA 2007" (print)

Frontier Poetry: "The Anorexic's Aubade" (Winner of 2018 Frontier Award for New Poets, selected by Victoria Chang) (Pushcart Prize Nominee)

RHINO: "The Secret Names of Sugar"

Nimrod: "Drawing My Grandfather's Last Christmas"(print)

Ninth Letter: "Frankenstein's Monster Describes Resurrection"

Passages North: "How to Walk on Wind" (print)

Natural Bridge: "The Tennis Courts, March"; "My Midwest"; "Diet" (print)

River Styx: "The Year I Learned Please is Every Color of the Sky" (print)

The Pinch: "Inheritance," "An Electron Cannot Be Observed Without Changing Its Speed" (print)

Third Coast: "The Storm & What It Meant" (print)

Connotation Press: "Body Language" "Selfie with Collapsed Rail Bridge"

Tinderbox Poetry Journal: "With My Body, I Worship Thee" "The Anorexic Confesses"

Grist: "Self Defense" (print)

Zone 3: "That Summer, I Became a Deer" (print)

Greensboro Review: "Ten Million American Men Will Suffer from an Eating Disorder During Their Lives" (print)

Gulf Stream: "Hunger"

Indianapolis Review: "The Tennis Courts, August" "Selfie with Lightning Strike"

Greensboro Review: "Ten Million American Men Will Suffer from an Eating Disorder During Their Lives" (print)

Texas Review: "Cruelty Towards Animals," "You Don't Know Someone with an Eating Disorder"(print)

The Good Men Project: "Men Don't Cry" and "Personal Geography"

Green Mountains Review: "Heat/Stroke" (discontinued)