Camile was the name of my mother’s lover.
His father owned mahogany plantations in Panama.
My father, well-equipped with scotch-plaid woolen blankets
a tent, and a rifle
hid out from the police in the Pennsylvania woods.

We lived in faculty housing at 711 High Street
on College Hill. I liked Camile, a senior.
His adoration of my mother,
15 years older, bemused me.
Her prettiness survived five pregnancies that
left her tits flat as pancakes.

I wouldn’t have known that,
except, that was what my father always said,
before he left, that is.
I wondered if that was why, and I wondered
if Camille’s mother’s tits were flat as pancakes too.
Maybe that was why Camile didn’t mind my mother’s flat tits.
Or, maybe, he liked pancakes.
We often had pancakes for dinner, especially during Lent.

Once, I peeked in at my mother in the bathtub
as she squeezed soapsuds over her etoliated flesh,
and I could see what Daddy meant.

Daddy was long gone by the time an older student
gave me a porn note in the movie theater
on State Street that spring. I didn’t know what it could mean
so I showed it to Camile who snatched it in a rage
and ran out of the house. I never knew where.

Camile often slipped into our living room
after we’d all gone to bed.
He sat at my mother’s feet, his head in her lap,
one hand around her waist, the other, hidden in her skirt.
She stroked his ashen hair as his glasses misted
while they listened to 78s of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt.

I only knew because I crept to the head of the stairs
to spy on them. Not out of curiosity, or even malice,
just to see the ludic rapture on my mother’s
otherwise suffering face.

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