Poetry: Gale Acuff

Gale Acuff

Revelation

I’ll never tell my sister: I saw you

through the keyhole of your bedroom door when

I was 10 and you were 16 and you

sat on your bed, wearing only your bra,

the first I’d ever seen not hanging from

a clothesline, or on a headless, armless

woman in a department store. And thought

If I have any sense I won’t reveal

this moment to anyone--let it be

our secret and not even a secret

that we share because I know and you don’t.

To my credit I never looked again,

but maybe that’s what guilt is, just one deed

and something to think about, second-sight

aplenty.  That was forty years ago.

In last night’s dream I saw me seeing you

again--I mean I saw me seeing you

for the first time since I saw my secret.

Now I’m squealing on me for what I saw.

I sneaked up behind me peeping into

your room and cleared my throat and the boy turned

and saw the look on my face. Shame on you,

I hissed. I know, he whispered. But just see.

***

Kibosh

Miss Hooker, I love you, I say in my

sleep and meanwhile I'm holding her close but

it's only the pillow, soft and mushy

like she is, or like I like to think she

is, mushy that is, like a marshmallow

and she won't hold me back nor engulf me,

that's a word I learned in regular school,

not Sunday School where she's my teacher and

I love her as much as do God but

if I tell her so she'll holler at me

Thou blasphemer, and I wouldn't blame her,

I like it when she hollers at me, say

when I screw up the Lord's Prayer like I

did this morning when she called on me to

recite it--I flubbed how it goes halfway

to the end and my classmates giggled but

she put the kibosh on that, so maybe

she loves me anyway, I mean real love

between husbands and wives, forget I'm 10

to her 25, love will find a way,

that's what God's for and not so much Nature

but anyway when I grow up I'll come

back to Sunday School and say hello and

maybe propose and if she turns me down

I'll ask and ask until she caves in, knock

and it shall be opened. Just by kissing.

***

Nailing It

In the end I finally get to see

God, the end of the world I mean, or is

that that the end of everything, I forget,

but Miss Hooker, my Sunday School teacher,

should know, knowing all about the Bible,

that's her job, or one of them, the other

is to save my soul from Hell and she's done

a pretty fair job so far but at last

it will be up to me to keep me from

fire although Jesus already died

for my sins--Miss Hooker says that if I'm

bad enough I'll go there anyway. So

what does God look like, I asked her after

class this morning. She answered, Remember

that we're made in His image, and I asked

Has He got red hair, green eyes, and freckles

like you do, and then she smiled. Verily.

***

Shut

Every night before I fall asleep

I pray to God and Jesus, too, that They

will let me marry Miss Hooker when I

grow up, she's 25 to my only

10 but just wait a few years and watch me

catch up, kind of, still be fifteen years back

but at least mature enough for marriage

by numbers anyway, and though she'll be

getting to old to be young enough we'll

have a few good years together and make

some babies and have some fun, whatever

sort of fun married people have, my folks

don't have a lot to say to each other

but then there's the nighttime when we're all in

our beds and so are Mother and Father

and Miss Hooker, though she sleeps somewhere else,

who knows what goes on when their doors are shut

and sometimes locked, at least on Friday nights

and sometimes Saturdays, too, and it's dark

all night long and they sleep in the same bed,

my parents I mean? Something tells me that

I came out of that dark place one morning

and--behold--here I am ten years later

and wondering if I'll ever go back

to what my parents were before they made

me. That's why I'm religious. That's why there's

Sunday School. I don't know any better.

*** 

Attention to Detail

I hope Miss Hooker goes to Heaven like

she keeps saying she wants to--she's big on

God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and

she's my Sunday School teacher, nobody

I know or even don't comes nearer to

God so I hope she finally gets to

meet Him, I'll bet He's heard lots about her

but of course He made her after all and

with a lot of attention to detail,

red hair and green eyes and freckles, I mean

Miss Hooker. I don't know what God looks like

but He'll have to go some to out-fine her.

Me, I'll be going to Hell, I guess, she

tells me so herself every Sunday,

how if I keep sinning and don't get saved

even though I'll still sin but not as much

and not so heinously, I'll go to Hell

and be tortured and Don't say I didn't

warn you. She did. And the rest of the class

--she warned the whole lot of us but wouldn't

it be something if when I land in Hell

I'll find her there? I wonder if she'll say

I told you so. Boy, will my face be red,

as red as her hair going up in flames

but maybe she won't be able to see,

my red face, I mean, for all the fire and

blood and brimstone, whatever that is. Then

it'll probably hit me that she's just

as embarrassed as I am. But I won't

rub it in. I'll forgive her. That's righteous.

***

                            

Terminal Ellipsis

Say I'm dead. So I'm in Heaven or Hell

like they tell me at Sunday School and if

Heaven then life is good even though I

had to lose mine to gain it, life I mean,

and Hell is bad, fire and brimstone, also

known as sulfur, and torture and torment

and so on, I'm in one of two places

but in a spot whichever one it is,

ha ha, because I think in either one,

the Good as well as the Bad, I'd wish that

I was still kicking even though I'd know

that one day I'd die, I'd have appetites

and desires that really signify, such

as tacos and pizza and caramel

popcorn and comic books and Three Stooges

and Ford Mustangs and Triumphs and pretty

girls at regular school and church, too, and

a new bicycle for X-mas and no

school on ice-storm days and every week my

allowance on time and without chintzing

and Playboy magazine when I can reach

it at the top of the magazine rack in the drug

store and Esquire and Saga and Argosy,

too, and Mad and Cracked and Sick and ice cream

in at least thirty-one flavors and

no rules against mixing 'em and Mother

and Father go to bed early Fridays

and Saturdays and leave the Magnavox

to me and my dog, I mean when they fetch

me one, and the B I actually

scored on the English test last week, it kept

me from failing fourth grade again but here

I am with God and Jesus and the Ghost

and saints and about a jillion angels

of all sorts of ranks, and harps and halos,

if I didn't know better I'd say that

I'm dwelling in Hell and not Heaven. Hey . . .

***

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Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Cardiff Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and many other journals in eleven countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.

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

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Setu, August 2020