Gale Acuff
Eat, this is my body
When I got home from Sunday School today
I told my parents that I had to die,
that's what my teacher said in class today
but they told me that they already knew
and then asked me why I didn't know, too,
so I asked them why they hadn't told me
and told them that I wish I'd never been
born because all that life amounts to is
death. We were having lunch and Father said
Pass the eggs, please, boy, so I did but he
didn't say Thank you and that's bad
manners. Then Mother started to cry—in
the Bible it's called weeping, it's crying
that's special. And I don't want to die, not
even if it leads to Heaven. My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me by
making Mother have me? Woman, behold
thy son, and pass the ketchup as you do.
Nothing
At Sunday School we sing and pray and play
games and march around the room to "Onward,
Christian Soldiers" and finish up with more
prayer, "The Lord's Prayer," the prayer that
Jesus wrote Himself, or God did, or God's
the Father but somehow Jesus is, too,
don't ask me how, I'm only 10, I just
do what I'm told. And then it's time to go
home, mine's about twenty minutes away
if I cut through the woods between here and
there, which I do, though sometimes it's pretty
dark, I guess that's when I'm in the middle,
which is a good place to pee except that
I'm too nervous to, I can't make water,
I don't know why. Once there was a man there
who asked me what the Hell I was doing
peeing in his woods and I said, Nothing,
which didn't make good sense, he said so, too,
then told me to take me and my nothing
out of there as fast as I could go so
I did—a week later when I came back
through he was gone, both going and coming,
and the Sunday after that and in fact
I've never seen him again, which makes me
wonder whether I saw him the first time.
But sure I did, it's like in comic books,
which I read about a million of when
I can get my hands on them. I wonder
if he could get his hands on me what he'd
do. I know what I'd do. I'm not kidding.
About Gale Acuff
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, McNeese Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Poem, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: 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.