- Gale Acuff
Selected Poetry by Gale Acuff

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons
Behoove
I'd like to say that when I die I'll go
to Heaven but I just can't swear to it
because I sin outstandingly for ten
years old and I don't
know how to quit, not
that they don't try to
help me out in Sunday
School, Miss Hooker I mean, my teacher, who's
25 and getting old but I'll bet
that when she kicks
she'll go to Heaven sure.
She says that death
can come at any time
so it behooves me,
that's her favorite word,
bet she found it in the Bible, to be
prepared, which means to believe that Jesus
is the Son of God,
Who was crucified
for our sins,
and ask Him to forgive us
for our sins even though
He died for them
anyway--I don't understand all of
it but that's why they call it religion,
I guess. And every time I sin,
she says,
Miss Hooker I mean, I crucify Him
again. Ouch. Last night Father whipped me
for staying up too late when
I've got God
to worship on Sunday morning,
and the week
before I showed up here late and he said,
Boy, you may not believe this, before he
commenced, but this is going to hurt me
more than it will you and
if that's so then
the old guy must be invulnerable.
Anyway, I guess that I hurt Jesus
more than He does me by making sin bad.
Miss Hooker said in class this morning that
Jesus, in some garden--Jehoshaphat,
Geronimo, Garanimal, I can't
remember but hope
that's not another
sin, I have so damn many already,
they just keep coming,
like summer hits
on the radio--I mean that Jesus
suggested to God that
He wasn't hot
on drinking from
the cup of sacrifice
or something like that, religion again,
but He went through with it anyway, so
the least we can do
(but she was staring
right at me as she said it)
was not sin
if we can help it and
most of the time
we can, Miss Hooker says,
though nobody's
perfect, and then ask God
in the name of
Jesus to forgive us (me again). I
do try like Hell but when
you're ten years old
you're pretty much eternal anyway,
for a while at least.
But if I should die
in sin, I'll wake up dead in
Hell and Don't
say I didn't warn you,
Miss Hooker says.
So after class today I asked her if
she sinned when she was young and she answered
I'm still young, Gale, so I said,
Oh, I know,
I mean when you were my age, and she said,
Whenever I sinned
I always asked God
to forgive me, so I asked, Can I sin
all the same and ask to forgive me
and He will? She answered, If you're trying
to fool Him you'll fail--He's too smart for that.
So I said, Well, if He's so smart, then why
was I ever born?
Miss Hooker answered,
To be born again.
Religion three times.
Crawl
Miss Hooker says
that if I don't believe
in Jesus, that He's the
Son of God and
died for my sins so that
I wouldn't go
to Hell to be tortured forever, which
is all I deserve, then the meaning
of the Cross won't stick and I'll go to Hell
all because
I'm too stupid not to get
saved, it's real simple,
just bow my head and
pray the Sinner's Prayer,
which I try now
and then but damned
if I can remember
the words. I told Miss Hooker
so after
Sunday School today and she pointed her
finger at me, not the go-to-Hell one
but the pointer-one, what's that called? and then
sort of wiggled it
east and west but not
a sexy wiggle,
more like a worm's head
when it pops itself out of the ground to see if
a robin's nearby. Do worms have heads? Hell,
maybe it's his butt
he's sticking out and
I could ask Miss Hooker but she'd just say
Read your Bible. Does that mean it's in here,
I'd ask but she'd just tell me again,
Get right with God, Gale. Anyway, while she
was wiggling his finger--
or is it wriggling?
--she asked, Shall we take it to the Lord in
prayer? though it
wasn't a question, more
like an order, but I disobeyed and
said, I gotta get home and
feed my folks
because they don't come to church at all, they
sleep late and when I get back they're slouching
at the kitchen table, slurping Sanka
and puffing Parliaments,
they're not even
dressed yet. They're sort of like my own children
and they need a mother. Miss Hooker's fit
but a little too preachy. I need her.
How will I know if the worm's not a boy?
Baptist
Miss Hooker says that
I'm going to die
one day--she's my Sunday School teacher so
I guess she knows--
and then go to Heaven
to meet God and
He's going to decide,
if He hasn't already,
where I'll spend
Eternity, which is such a long time,
Miss Hooker says,that
it's not really time
at all, which means
it lasts forever. Fair
enough, I guess, and
there are two places
I can go to. I'll be in the first one
--Heaven that is--for a bit, but if I've
sinned too much, which must mean past my quota,
then God sends me to Hell, much worsethan death
itself, Miss Hooker says, which means Heaven
is better, better than
death I mean but
also better than Hell, maybe even
better than earth and Hell combined. I was
going to raise my hand
and ask her if
that's so but she's a
pretty fast talker
and beautiful, too--red hair and green eyes
and freckles--so I
get distracted and
I wonder if that's what lust is or if
I have to wait until I'm older to
find out. I'd like to
ask herthat, too, but
after class might be better--
in here we're
all ten years old and
some of us not so
mature. Anyway, I go to meet God
like Miss Hooker says and He hunts me up
in the Book of Life, my name I mean, and
if I'm not there, my name again, that's rough
and woe unto me so
it's down to Hell
and the Lake of Everlasting Fire, where
I'll drown and burn both at once. I'd like to
see that in a movie. Wow. But if I
rate then I stay in Heaven forever,
which sounds like a pretty good deal except
there's no sin up there
and without some
--at least a little--how
would I know how
good goodness is? But I guess that's not my
problem, at least not up there,
only down
here. I really don't want to die at all
but I bet I have no choice--I had no
choice about being born, either.
If God
had asked me,
Do you want to live, before
I was born I mean--if that's possible,
if I could've been alive somehow in
Heaven before I was alive after
being born--I might've answered, Not if
I have to die,
it sounds like that might
hurt. But if He ever asked me,
I don't
remember. I hope
that's not a sin. Me,
I'd like to die and
come back here again,
just to see what
it's like over there, just
to see for myself and return to tell
everybody what's in store for them
and if it's true what we hear down here
and what the Bible says
and the old hymns
and the preachers on TV,
but I doubt
that anyone would
listen and believe.
I guess that's what you call a voice crying
in the wilderness. That could get me killed.
Grappler
In Sunday School today
I slipped away
early when Miss Hooker
was distracted
by the Lord's Prayer,
in fairness to me
it was the second one of the hour, I
missed the third and last
but was present for
the very first one,
in fact Miss Hooker
called on me to lead
the class in it and
her, too, it wasn't hard,
I've memorized
it backwards and forwards and sideways but
halfway through the second one, the second
Lord's Prayer I mean, when all heads were bowed
and all eyes closed, I tiptoed out, not real
easy in my
not-new-but-still-stiff-since-
I-only-wear-
'em-once-a-week Florsheims
and then I moved
slowly down the plywood
and two-by-four prefab
stairway in front
of our portable building and then I
was walking pretty quickly home when I
heard everyone behind me shout Amen
and and Amen again,
that seconding
by Miss Hooker sounding lonesome but then
I was so far away
and someday we'll
get married,
when I'm a few years older
than my 10 and even if she ages
maybe when I'm
grown it won't signify,
we'll just take it easy together like
Mother and Father do, they don't talk much
and when they do it's usually to
me, is that what they call menopause
or menagerie or menage a trois,
I'll ask Miss Hooker next week
but I walked
out in order to get home
in time for Lou
Thesz against
Gene Kiniski for the World
Heavyweight Championship
--okay, it
may be phony like Father
says but real
enough in some other
way I can't quite
put my finger on.
I'm in love with her,
Miss Hooker I mean, it is and isn’t
real, a lot like love is wrestling,
it's fixed
but you can still get hurt,
take the Bible,
please, everything in it's
so Miss Hooker
swears but like I told her after church last
week not only are we
going to die but
but we can get hurt, too,
whether we're up
there in the squared circle
or in the stands
or the wooden chairs
belting the ringside
where you pay a lot
more to be close to
the action, sometimes
even part. I give.
Nearer
Time to go to bed,
I tell Miss Hooker,
my Sunday School teacher
and my wife, in
a dream last night.
This morning I'll see her
again, I mean at church
and in class where
we'll commence with the Lord's Prayer, alpha,
and wind up the same way,
that's omega,
and in between I'll be studying her
so hard that I'll forget
what she's saying,
which is as good a definition of
love as any other one
I've heard and
I owe it all to her, Miss Hooker, but
maybe to God, too,
and Jesus, Father
and Son and but still They're kind of the same and
that pretty much sums up
what religion
is. So in my dream
last night we retired,
that means we went to bed but stayed awake
for a few minutes, shooting the breeze, when
suddenly I woke
but outside my dream
so that Miss Hooker was gone. Was she ever
really there?
After Sunday School today
I'm going to
screw up my courage and
ask her what the truth is. I'm only
10 to her 25 but if I'm brave,
say like David, I can slay Goliath.
Maybe I won't
mention that part about
being in bed together. Maybe I'll
put her in a chair beside it, reading
the Bible to me or singing "Nearer
My God to Thee."
I only want to know
how much which wasn't my own doing she
was with me, and
I'll repeat the question.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Poem, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has had three books of poetry published, by BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.