Mosquito

By J. Patrick Lewis b. 1942

I was climbing up the sliding board

When suddenly I felt

A mosquito bite my bottom

And it raised a big red welt.

So I said to that mosquito,

“I'm sure you wouldn't mind

If I took a pair of tweezers

And I tweezered your behind!”

He shriveled up his body

And he shuffled to his feet,

And he said, “I'm awfully sorry

But a skeeter's got to eat!

Still, there are mosquito manners,

And I must have just forgot 'em.

And I swear I'll never never never

Bite another bottom.”

But a minute later Archie Hill

And Buck and Theo Brown

Were horsing on the monkey bars,

Hanging upside down.

They must have looked delicious

From a skeeter's point of view

'Cause he bit 'em on the bottoms,

Archie, Buck and Theo too!

You could hear 'em goin' HOLY!

You could hear 'em goin' WHACK!

You could hear 'em cuss and holler,

Goin' smack, smack, smack.

A mosquito's awful sneaky,

A mosquito's mighty sly,

But I never never never

Thought a skeeter'd tell a lie.

Source: Two-Legged, Four-Legged, No-Legged Rhymes (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)

Biography

J. Patrick Lewis grew up in Gary, Indiana and earned a BA at Saint Joseph’s College, an MA at Indiana University, and a PhD in economics at the Ohio State University. Lewis taught in the department of Business, Accounting and Economics at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, until 1998 when he became a full-time writer.

Lewis is the author of more than fifty books of poetry for children, which find their shape in both free . . .

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