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.
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.
