Where’s My Bucket? by Scott Silsbe

Three men sit in the booth of a bar
drinking draft beers from pint glasses.
They make slow, deliberate movements.
They talk about books, music, and politics.
One of them says, “Let’s prank somebody.”
The others laugh, but he’s serious about it.
A man named Elvis walks into the bar.
The merry prankster yells, “Elvis!” loud
enough that the man named Elvis hears
his name shouted over the bar-noise.
He sees the prankster and comes over
to the booth where the three men sit.
Elvis has half of a sandwich in a bag.
He’s wearing a University of Pittsburgh
jacket and he tells the three men about
his job, about driving cross-country,
about what it feels like to find yourself
in an earthquake, grabbing for a tree
to stabilize yourself but realizing that
the tree is shaking and not stable either.
When Elvis leaves the table, the prankster
pranks a plumber, not knowing that he is
a plumber, yelling, “Where’s my bucket?!”
into the phone. He pranks Jimmy, a retired
cop turned poet turned boxing instructor,
and says, “I had too many onion rings—
I just puked all over the bar. Pick me up!”
It’s just this way with poets sometimes.
Sometimes the world that they live in
needs them to give it a little extra color.

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and grew up down the river from there. He now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and have been collected in the three books: Unattended Fire (2012), The River Underneath the City (2013), and Muskrat Friday Dinner (2017).  He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.