ABSTRACT
for Gail Fischer To tell the truth, I really am a balloon, I'm only rubber, shapeless, smelly on the inside . . . I'm growing almost invisible. Even the truckers admire my fine indistinctiveness, shoving their fat hands through my heart as they cry, "Hey, baby! You're really weird!" Two things may happen: if the gas explodes at the grill some night, I'll burst through the greasy ceiling into black, high air, a white something children point at from the bathroom window at 3 a.m. Or I'll simply deflate. Sweeping up, the day shift will find a blob of white substance under my uniform by the door. "Look," they'll say, "what a strange unnatural egg; who wants to touch it?" Actually, I wonder how I'd 413really like being locked into orbit around the earth, watching blue, shifting land forever— Or how it would feel to disappear unaccountable in the arms of some welder who might burst into tears & keep my rubbery guts inside his lunch box to caress on breaks, to sing to . . . Still it would mean escape into a snail's consciousness, that muscular foot which glides a steep shell over a rocky landscape, recording passage on a brain so small how could it hurt?
