by Gale Acuff

I love everybody, that's how you get


to Heaven when you're croaked and I tell my
Sunday School teacher that everybody
includes Satan, too, but she said nix, he's
not worthy of adoration like God
and Jesus and the Holy Ghost so I
said that it's not that I adore Satan
but even evil folks have feelings, too,
then she said that Satan's not a person
so don't waste love on an evil angel
so I said Well. ma'am, how would you like it
being all-good like you are if other
folks were vile and didn't like you because
you were different and she said Gale, you're missing
the point but I said I'm pointing at you.


 



If God's got any guts He'll send me to

Hell and not let Jesus take mercy on 
me but have Satan punish and punish
me because I sin manifoldly or
whatever the right word is, In the be
-ginning was the word, I bet it wasn't
manifoldly, ha--but my Sunday School
teacher says that it's a sin to laugh in
class which is what I did and fetches Hell
and I wasn't laughing with somebody
but at them, Raymond Annandale threw up 
his breakfast all over the floor and that
includes the grape Tang and Twinkies we ate
during class and I exploded, so to 
speak, blowing laughter. But I mopped it up.

                                                 
                                  

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Flatbush Review,Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Birmingham Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Ohio Journal, Sou’wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Slant, Chiron Review, Coe Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Aethlon, Able Muse, The Font, Teach.Write., Hamilton Stone Review, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, and many other journals. He is the author of three books of poetry and has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine. He now lives in Tucson, Arizona.