MOSQUITO by Gu Gang

MOSQUITO

by Gu Gang

Ailing in a corner, the sunset flits by

like a mosquito.

Slender long feet, a slap,

limbs stuck to the grid,

sketches of tiny cracks

on a white tile.

Palm size, heat on the ice.

Rectangular window, an air vent,

a suck, the mosquito does what it does best:

blood transfusions.

Drilling a well on the skin, it carries

different blood types,

flaunting the world with its fishy smell.

Swinging a bamboo fan, a draft from left to right.

Plain shirt, sleeves rolled up in summer heat,

bare elbows,

dry and cracked in old age.

Unable to ever swing again,

flying flies are stuck to our glassy eyes,

as if salvation awaits.

About the poet:

Gu Gang is a literary editor at the Six Points Division of East China Normal University Press and judge of the Beijing Art Network International Poetry Prize. He is the author of poetry collections Selected Short Poems of Gu Gang (Hong Kong Galaxy Press) and Burden of the Mortal World: Selected Poems 1987–2011 (Red Hen Press, USA). His poems have appeared in poetry journals at home and abroad, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, and his essays and literary critiques have been published in publications such as Book Town. He won the DJS Art Foundation Book Award (2012), the First Shanghai International Poetry Festival Poetry Creation Contest Award (2016), and the Beijing Art Network International Chinese Poetry Prize (2016).