The poem begins with a small trick: mention an itch, and you suddenly feel one. From there it turns that idea into a joke and then into something stranger. The title, "Demonology," treats itches as demons, and the long middle section reads like a roll call of them, running from the arm to the jaw, with a few twitches slipped in. The list is funny, but it also wears you down. By the end you may well be scratching.
The mood shifts near the close. The mention of an amputee's missing limb that still itches brings in something sad, "an unbridgeable absence." Then the speaker offers a sharp little insight: the itch is a "bait-&-switch." What we actually crave, the poem suggests, isn't the relief of a particular spot but the act of scratching itself. The tone moves from playful to quietly unsettling, hinting at how easily our wants can mislead us.