- Poem with You Drinking a Cup of Coffee
This poem has no occasion. I edited that out a long time ago. It, like a body, or like a memory, has rebuilt itself over time:
each of its component parts has been exchanged for newer, more efficient ones, so that now, when I overhear someone
saying the word “coffee,” you are drinking a cup of coffee. Input the output, ad infinitum: I have become so efficient,
I have even learned to grieve formulaically, while the function of your absence has grown less and less
integral to my algorithm: you aren’t even you anymore. [End Page 167]
Caleb Curtiss teaches high school English in Champaign, Illinois. His poetry has appeared, or will appear soon, in such journals as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Redivider, PANK, and the Literary Review.