Showing posts with label Gale Acuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gale Acuff. Show all posts

Thursday, October 3, 2024

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 ReviewPoemSlantAethlonFlorida Review, South Carolina ReviewCarolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota ReviewNorth Dakota QuarterlyNew TexasMidwest QuarterlyPoetry MidwestAdirondack ReviewWorcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River ReviewDelmarva ReviewMaryland Poetry ReviewMaryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor ReviewPlainsongsChiron ReviewGeorge Washington ReviewMcNeese Review, WeberWar, Literature & the Arts, Poet LoreAble Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write.OracleHamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff ReviewTokyo ReviewIndian Review, Muse India, Bombay ReviewWesterly, 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.