Mosquitoes in South Jersey
I never knew where the Pleiades were, glittering
like larvae swarms, or Orion with his golden sword,
south of the marshes buzzing with mosquito nests
where the sprayer jeep edged slowly down the road
while we kids chased after it, bathing in the white belch
from its double tanks strapped on like a hunchbacked Icarus.
We smelled the sweet sepulchral odor of benzene,
whiffs from exotic outlands and refineries, our pores
awash in happy prancing fumes, like hyssop grease,
as we laughed in acetone ecstasy, gesturing and running
to keep up with the man in the mask behind the wheel,
the summer dusk rolling its red dice across the fields.
I breathed the aromatic cloud, swimming all the way
to supper, my mother in her kitchen shrine before the sink,
the yellow papered walls holding our lives together
for a while (though one mosquito always managed
to get in through subtle rips in the screen),
the mint and parsley sprigs on the small potatoes
skinned in mild butter froth, the sun setting
into the neighbor’s corn, and we, my father’s day shift
behind him, planning our evening over the simple leisure
of the tablecloth, faint checkered red with a few bare
dumpling stains, which my mother would soon wipe away
with her frayed damp rag of woven stars.
Askold Skalsky has published poetry in numerous journals, most recently in Southern Poetry Review and Notre Dame Review. Askold received an Individual Artist Award for poetry from the Maryland Arts Council in 2005.