Gizmo
As usual, murderers and cheats were in charge and forcing catastrophe on the rest of us. A woman of about my age who looked teasingly familiar stumbled out of the smoke. My mind was a tangle of questions. “Is that your” – I didn’t know what to call it – “‘gizmo’?” I asked. She stared blankly at me, the pupils of her eyes pinpoint and fixed. The cows in the milking shed bawled in distress. Amid the chaos, a child let go of the string. The red balloon floated away like the soul from the body at the instance of death.
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
