A Killing

by Ian C Smith

Alone with him in silence

when a mosquito settles on his forehead

she does what she would always do

smacks it flat.

Engorged with someone’s blood

it never knew what hit it.

He doesn’t flinch.

You don’t become big in his world

by flinching.

What a send-off, she thinks later

breasts squeezed up and half-out of a black dress

thousands of dollars worth of sunnies alone

for a bloodthirsty pest. 

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Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Antipodes, cordite, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of eight books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com).  To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over a thousand of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.