Cult Classic: The Thousand Oaks Youth Ranch in Corsicana, Texas  

I buried things in my baptism: any & everything 
with a name, with a face I could learn to love. 
According to the adults, it was time to 
be saved or be brazen enough to lie. 
They circled the flare of us—children 
buzzing round the bed of the bonfire 
with our Bibles and the sticky vowels 
of our horns—calling down the full-chested 
sun to breach the olive-green edge 
of earth at the end of the church 
camp’s yard. Summer’s sacrifice, I was 
already filled with sulfur. 
Someone else confessed to pleasure: 
to boyfriends and booze and blunts
but somehow, I was fingered 
the culprit. One by one, 
my teachers bothered me 
for the truth, for the sins 
I needed to shed. Of course, 
I said, myself. I’ve only kissed 
myself. I’ve only known myself. 
Not enough, they said. 
Burning in hell, they said. 
And burn I did. Same as all of us 
too-young-to-knows 
clasping together our hands 
round the fire. Together
with our necks thrown open, 
bare and thin beneath the saturated sky, 
together we drowned 
out the sound of any possible answer 
with our prayers.