How to Hunt Wasps: Camp Rodney, 2001
- How to Hunt Wasps: Camp Rodney, 2001
On my honor, I will do my best / To do my duty to God and my country and obey the Scout Law; / To help other people at all times; / To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
—the Scout Oath
On my honorwe flared outaround a picnic tableakimboso much prepubescentsweat steepingour khaki uniforms brownbeneath shocks of blond sunlight.We didn’t looklike the scouts on the manualthat is to say whiteboys but boycould we ever tie upour neckerchiefs in a knot.We didn’t have the rightbadges but there wasno shortage of eight-foot flagpolesto wind up as baseball bats.We smashed canafter can after canof emerald Mountain Dewshaken up until the picnic tablewas awash in greensyrup and sparkling sunshineall of us leaning in to seea handful of waspsplastered to tabletoppinned beneath the weightof brilliant hissing dollops.There we squattedgreedy above wood planks. [End Page 69] We relished the knowledgeof wet wings miredbeneath our bootsdumb to the methods of mercyable only to imaginetheir greatest agony. [End Page 70]
benjamín naka-hasebe kingsley, Affrilachian author and Kundiman alum, belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. His debut collection, Not Your Mama’s Melting Pot, was selected by Bob Hicok and released in 2018 by Backwaters Press. Colonize Me is forthcoming with Saturnalia in 2019, to be followed by Dēmos, out with Milkweed in 2020. Peep his recent work in Boston Review, FIELD, jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Oxford American, and Tin House, among others.
