GAS Featured Poet: Gale Acuff

 

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.

     Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

F-150

 

After Sunday School today I was so absent

-minded as I walked home I walked clean by

my house, my father's house that is, that is

my parents' house but maybe my house, too,

I've lived there only ten years but still filled

it with a lot of life or all I could

in a decade's worth of time so how come

I walk right past without realizing

where the Hell I am? I was damned near down

-town by the time I caught myself gone too

far so I turned around but instead of

marching back home I froze in position

like a good little Christian soldier might

and awaited my next order but it

never came until I saw Miss Hooker

driving toward me and of course past and

if she'd wanted to run me over I'd

have helped her, helped her like a target does

the archer or shooter, at least sometimes,

by just standing there ready to take what

-ever's fired its way but Miss Hooker drove

her Ford F-150 right past me and smiled 

and waved and slowed down and waved some

more but I didn't move even my face,

I just stood and gazed through her and saw

us together in the future, married

I mean, and that's a lot to see in just

a split-second but more than I've ever

seen before, don't ask me why I can't make

sense, I'm in too much love, what's wrong with that

 

is that I'm 10 to her 25 and

though we have a future we can't share it

like I'd like to and what I saw inside

her eyes was I saw myself being

buried and Miss Hooker standing over

me, crying like crazy, weeping it's called,

and me old but looking asleep but I'm

dead, I guess you had to be there

and I almost was but then I came back

from the dead or almost-dead and hurried

home and just barely avoided missing

Sunday dinner. Tuna casserole. Christ.