Summer Camp

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We were feral 

We were young

We slept in bags

We had some fun

I pissed the bed

and cried for home

that first summer,

didn't write one letter.

Next summer

I kissed a 'kitchen girl'

and smoked my first cigarette

with tent mates in a tunnel

we dug in the woods.

On a canoe trip

our unstable counsellor

paisley red bandanna'd

paddling stern

kicked me hard in the spine

with his unlaced steel-toed 

Kodiak boot,

called me a 'fucking kike'

for laughing at something

he didn't like,

the gunnels shook

I didn't understand

what he said,

but I shut up.

My last summer

I carried a pocket-knife,

and a wooden matchstick hung

from my lower lip

ready to set whatever

on fire

I can still taste the sulfur.