16
Saving Sedgwick
by Kenneth Gurney
It was May ninth, eighteen sixty-four
that my first time travel experiment took me back to
and deposited me in a smoke tinged orchard.
I was disoriented and a little dizzy,
leaned against a tree, one arm extended
for that brain-swirl to calm down and equilibrium
reestablish itself.
I don’t know if there was glimmer of energy
or a distortion in the air that made waves,
but a guy in the tree a thousand yards away,
adjusted his aim from somewhere else to me.
I saw the puff of smoke, but never heard the shot
before my forehead gave way to the conical bullet
and its flattening lead blew a three inch hole
out the back of my skull along with the brains
in the path of its trajectory.