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.
