THREE POEMS

One Hundred Demons It’s Tuesday and my partner tells meI smell of vacation—so, salt, pine needles,perhaps cantaloupe—depending onthe Tuesday. As a child in the woods,I woke every morning to bad hair daysand mountain breath. Rain-water collectedin gullies of blue tarps slung over cordsof firewood, upturned lids of trash cans,abandoned cement buckets. Stagnantand ever breeding, I watched the mosquitosborn to the hot greens of Pennsylvaniain summer. Each bite as insatiableand swelling as the last. Before we burnedthe hide of a poached bear, my jalapeñogarden burned bright with capsaicin. Marco, our neighbor, showed me howto tend the heat, and sat me downto watch The Godfather, parts one throughthree, Casablanca, too. There are lessonsto be learned from the Italian men that findfamily wherever they look. Twenty yearslater, Marco will die from an unidentifiedinfection contracted on…