A mantis clings upside-down to a porch column. I wave a mosquito in its direction, and it turns its head to watch the ungainly craft fly by.
mosquito
June 19, 2012
While a question mark butterfly mines the pores of my index finger for salt, a mosquito lands on my ring finger and sinks her own probe.
September 27, 2011
Cloud-to-cloud lightning, thunder like a cloth being torn. Downpour. We’ll remember 2011 for years: “That was the autumn of the mosquitoes.”
September 25, 2011
A mosquito’s thin song in my ear. I wave her away, then watch as she and another tangle, part, and settle upside-down on the white ceiling.
September 9, 2011
A mottle-winged moth flops like a fish across the floor. A mosquito tries to drill through denim, her hind-most legs like levers going up.
June 2, 2011
Dawn finds the walking onions still as trolls, except for a slight swaying—no doubt the wind. A mosquito bite swells between my knuckles.
August 7, 2010
Halfway up the hill, a yellow-billed cuckoo is calling over and over, that lyrical coo turning mechanical, relentless. Mosquito in my ear.
August 12, 2009
A mosquito creeps across my shirt, an inchworm measures my jeans, and a hummingbird circles my head: this morning, I’m doomed to disappoint.
July 12, 2009
High, deliberate notes of a blue-headed vireo: April revisited. A slow floodwater mosquito dies between the heels of my palms.