The Wasp
by Miles Bell
crawling over my skylight
isn’t interested in me
but neither is he going anywhere
this window doesn’t open
and the Culture section of the Sunday Times
is close at hand
I practice a couple of swings
calculating angles
transforming into a
dead-eyed mean cold killer
then hit him hard
once –
he falls stunned to my coffee table
twice –
and he’s in half
abdomen already curling
from a comma to a full stop
six inches from the rest of him
I sit and watch his movements slow
and think of Kerouac crying
inconsolable to himself
when he killed the mouse on Desolation Peak
before going down the mountain
and thoughtlessly hurting those he loved
and I like to say if I had a tattoo
it would read “Love the little things”
but without the disclaimer
apart from the stinging things
or ugly skittering things
or moths who after all are the shadows of butterflies
and made of dust
and I tell myself it was the wasp or me
because my grandma is violently allergic
and I ended up with her nose
and her asthma
so we justify cruelty and pointless waste
to get on with eating lunch
and shopping laughing and fucking
without thinking too much
of the swipe that’s reserved for us
