Gale Acuff

I don't want to die, now or later, im

by Gale Acuff

-mortality's my aim and I mean here

on Earth, not in some no-body After

-life—I want Eternity in my home

-town, where I can buy comic books and ham

-burgers and peanut brittle and Mallow

-mars and ice cream with a free second scoop

on Friday afternoons after school but

I have to run like Hell to make it to

the order-window on time and when I'm

late I curse good but when I make it on

time I'm a believer and when the girl

opens up again for me it's mercy

and I'm in love with her except that our

kids might have red hair and I'm scared of fire.

People die all the time but not all at

by Gale Acuff

once, not usually anyway, not

in our neighborhood nor even our town

and county and if that happened I'd be

one of 'em, unless maybe I was down

in our cellar with the winter squash and

autumn apples or in the next state, that's

Alabama, visiting first cousins,

Mother's sister and her children—Father's

live up in Tennessee a bit farther

away, unless of course the Big One falls

and blows all the South away but with luck

I'd still be in the cellar when the bomb

drops louder than even barrels of pears

all gone over at once. They're my favorite.

I'd say that I don't want to die but I

by Gale Acuff

do, do want to die that is, but also

do because I am, and so are others,

facing what I face, whatever it's called.

I wonder how they manage mortali

-ty. . . better than I do, let's hope, because

on my last date the subject arose, death

that is, and she wasn't prepared when I

asked her if she was afraid to die—or

maybe she was and I wasn't even

though I was who asked the cosmic question

that made her reply I have to powder

my nose. Then she came back with her face moist.

I'd say that she's dead already save that

when I call, she answers. So I hang up.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and have 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.

He has taught tertiary English courses in the U.S, PR China, and Palestine.