At Grace Basketball Camp if you made 100 free throws
in a row practicing by yourself you could get anything
you want from the snack bar on the last night of camp
when the parents came to watch the all-stars and see
who got named “Mr. Hustle” for the week. Well I didn’t
make 100 free throws in a row but I pretended I made
100 free throws in a row and put my name on the board
that said so thinking no one would know I was real close
anyway I must’ve got to 89 before one rimmed out and I said
“close enough.” And at the Friday night awards when they called
the free throw kids I booked it to the snack bar up in the second level
of the bleachers and scored a giant Coke in a giant container
the dimensions of which were approximately the dimensions
of the human head and I turned to descend two steps my hands slipped
the drink crashed on the dirty floor it was an Evangelical
basketball camp which means they had Bible Study every night
which was optional though you couldn’t spend that time on anything else
if you didn’t go they were really on a mission to send us each a message
from God about the error of our ways and so on and there I am
at the snack bar stairs looking at this giant puddle I’d created
feeling a shame that was less than divine and I rushed off
clutching that shame to my chest because I deserved it
leaving the mess for a hapless camp counselor to clean up
and I know what you think I’m going to say
you think I’m going to say And that was where I learned
to lie and let someone else bear the consequences
but the karma of that moment, Dear Reader, was returned to me
thereafter tenfold, shame, shame, bounties of shame,
and haven’t I always borne the consequences of the lies
people have told about me?
*previously published in Chiron Review
Steve Henn teaches high school English in northern Indiana. His previous books include Guilty Prayer (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson, 2017). He’s proud of the children of himself and late American artist Lydia Henn. He roots for the Fighting Irish, played high school soccer, and gives poetry readings in all kinds of places, from Pittsburgh to Long Beach, travel conditions and money conditions and time permitting. His new collection, Trying To Catch a Flame in this Windstorm at the End of the World (2025), is available now from Arroyo Seco Press, Amazon, and other places. Deep Cuts is due out from Wolfson Press in 2026.