CALEB CURTISS / 5 POEMS

June 23, 2026 / Always Crashing

Bucket Baby

The wedding had been over for a good long while,
and so, it was just me and the wife standing there
talking about how nice some parts were
and how we might’ve done other parts differently,

enjoying our post-ceremony cocktails, which
at this particular wedding was some beer from a keg,
which we did not turn our noses up at. In short,
we were doing what people do in these situations

when this kid who was, like, two or—
I don't know—five years-old, he came
running up to the ice bucket next to us,
smiling all big and happy. But then,

instead of saying something cute
like you might expect a toddler to say,
he reached over and grabbed the lip
of the ice bucket and tried to flip his head

straight into the water, just like the warning label
on the pickle buckets in the walk-in at the bar,
and for a second there,
it looked like he was going to succeed,

what, with that big old happy smile of his
brushing over the waterline and his legs
sort of dancing around up there in the air
like he was doing an unassisted keg stand,

which got me thinking anew about that label
and how, when I'd started at the bar, I'd seen it
and wondered several things, including: what kind
of baby would stick its head into a bucket?

And what became of him, anyway? And, how,
in the first place, could something like this
even happen? Now, I felt I might finally
be getting my answers, and I didn't really like them.

Lucky for this baby, here the two of us stood, a pair
of responsible adults, advising him to get his nose
and mouth away from the bucket and to go find
his mother. But then he just kept coming back,

talking about how his mom had sent him for more
sodas before lunging back
into the bucket. It was like he was playing
a game with us. It didn't matter

how many sodas we’d hand him, or which kind,
all he’d do is splash ’em back into the bucket
and then try to fish his head in after them again.
It was clear this little guy just wasn’t going to stop

until he ended up head down in that bucket of ice
like the pickle bucket baby, who by now,
has probably been taken off life support.
And so I did what anyone would do in my situation.

I put all the buckets that were on the floor
up on top of a table where they sat, safe. By then,
the dancing had started in earnest, and so
we joined in, the two of us together, slow

and romantic, ignoring the beat, making
the moment our own, like this was our wedding,
like that was our kid.

Michael Clayton

Summer of weekends
more or less
like this one: full with hot

coffee in the morning, beer
in the late afternoon
after eating my fill

of buttered popcorn
in the freezing movie theatre
across town. Ice

over gin when the hot pink
azaleas outside of the bar
begin to droop

over their concrete
enclosures, like sun dresses
on the street.

Where
are you

when I step
from my bar stool
and turn back

toward home
like Shiva
descending Kailash

in a James Tate mask,
my thumb
at rest

on the tip of a strike-
anywhere match, smiling
my version

of the smile
George Clooney
holds on his face

for that split second
in the back of his cab
at the end

of the movie, waiting for you
to be waiting for me.

Tautology

It is possible to see another, not
the body of another

as a field, a wilderness upon which
any breach might come

to define what is flesh and what is not flesh.
This flesh, and that: a vacancy

held in the soft opening of flesh: myth
of accord. Summer became

Fall, and now the mornings arrive dark and slow—
you hold yourself there in the sheets

next to me, an unmistakable performance
of stillness.

We have done wrong together. I hold it for you
like a jar on a hill

enclosed in a thing like winter: perfect
wilderness. With no

therapy office utterances left
to spill out of us, we are

what we are: a wilderness inside
of a wilderness.

STET

every word I ever said to you.

Terroir

Alone
I think of it
As a body
Without organs
Space
Expanded upon
Stretched out
Into a road
That leads us
Wherever we want to go
The only problem is
We don’t
Get to decide
Where that is
Or how long
It takes us
To arrive
Use your voice
All you want
Sign up
For special
Tracking cookies
To exercise it
Passively
Or press decline
As a matter
Of course
Don’t get
Too bogged down
With specifics
At this point
Just watch
To see
What happens
When the inputs
Grow nearer
The outputs like
Dendrites
Stalactites and
Whatever those
Structures are
That rise
Toward them like
A bar chart
That image
Of images
Scarcity
Not a curse
Spoken
Into the soul
But the soul
Spoken into being
As a curse
Syllables
Mumbled in the soft
Interiority
Of retail environments
We'll never
Visit again
Said
Another way
I have become
Too comfortable
In the regions
I am most
Vulnerable
Go ahead and
Ask any LCS
W you know
Therapy-speak
Dirty to me
Until I can't
Help but go be
Productive
Tho just
As often these days
I lay in bed
Like Yoko
or John not Paul
Upon accepting a fat line
Of beta blockers
To the dome
While the world
I’ve constructed
In the palm
Of my hand
Begins
To collapse
Crushing all
The children inside of it first
Stone caves in
On a city
A structure
Upon a room
A room
Upon a body
Inhabited
With echoes
History multi-
Directional
Visible
In the persistent
Sheen of new
Construction materials
Shimmering
Arches rendered
In polyvinyl acetate
Steel reinforced
A franchise
Formed
In crushed stone
It masquerades
As stone
But turns
To dust
I dig
At dusk
Through the rubble
Use my hand
As a shovel
Gravel
Inert limbs
Scattered as if
A storm
Has just passed through
Familiar
Hardly intelligible
A body finished
In atomized concrete
Flesh adjudicated
In chalk
Accretions
Something
Like stone
And something
Within that stone
Whispers
Simple to me:
Stalagmite

Caleb Curtiss is author of the poetry collection Age of Forgiveness. His writing appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, New England Review, The Southern Review, and The Slowdown.

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