Romance
  
 I was holding my Sunday School teacher,
 Miss Hooker, close to me in bed last night
 in a dream. When I woke up for breakfast
 and to get dressed for church next morning I
 wondered if she'd had it, too, and figured
 I'd find out by the look on her face when
 I came into the classroom, a little
  
 late--fashionably late, as Mother says,
 though I never tell her my dreams because
 she wouldn't understand, or maybe she
 would, and might tell Father, who'd bring it up
 at Sunday dinner--I don't like to be
 embarrassed. Miss Hooker's a lot older,
 25, maybe, to my 10. In dreams
  
 I can have almost anything I want,
 including her, and marriage, and babies,
 a fast car and a big house and color
 TV, and can be a rock star, say Paul
 instead of the real Paul in the Beatles
 --John, ____, George, and Ringo, and there we are
 on Ed Sullivan and Hullabaloo
 and Shindig but we're too big for Bandstand.
 Or I can be Henry Aaron and hit
 a ton of homers and trot the bases
 as if I own them and what's the hurry?
  
 But when I got to Sunday School today
 Miss Hooker wasn't there, was ill, Miss Sapp,
 the substitute, said. So I fell asleep
 almost, but to my credit, only at
 the end. I walked home and started to cry
 only halfway there, wondering whether
 Miss Hooker would die, and where would I be
 then, and my dreams? My only hope is if
 she's well again next week and can return
 --or if I put my dreams to the test I
 can heal her tonight. She's lying in bed
  
 while I sit on a wooden chair beside
 and watch her carefully. I'm no doctor
 but I think that I'm able to tell when
 someone's in trouble. I call a real one
 who soon comes and saves her at the last second.
 Then he takes her to the hospital and
 by the time I get her things together                                                           
 and arrive there myself, she's in his arms
 in her private room where I've stumbled in.
 Boy, are they embarrassed. Miss Hooker looks
 at me as if I'm fresh roadkill myself
 and says, Oh Darling, it's not what you think,
 even if it is. Huh? I say. That's how
 adults explain things anyway. So I
 say Don't worry about it, and go home,
 and wash the bedsheets and dry them and make
 it look like no one has ever flopped there.
 Then I run away from this two-bit town
  
 and wander back in about twenty years
 to look Miss Hooker up and if she's not
 the doctor's wife or anyone else's
 I court her again. In those twenty years
 I've had a slew of dreams about her and
 they'll keep me company until she says
 Oh yes, yes! and if she never does then
 I'll just go back home. Wherever that is
  
 --maybe I mean that I'll just waste away.
 And maybe she'll visit me on my death
 bed, and beg my forgiveness, and I'll say
 Sure, and we'll send for the preacher and get
 spliced just before I expire and go to
  
 a better place, at least a different,
 and wait for her whose life I helped to save
 before it was too late for me, almost,
 and who gave me a lifetime in my last
 winks, and in whose arms I died. Finally.
  
  
  
  
 Trinity
  
 I love Miss Hooker but she doesn't love
 me back, at least not the right way. She's my
 Sunday School teacher and I feel sorry
 for her because she's old, 25, to
 my 10, but she's still pretty appealing,
 red hair and green eyes and a couple of
 moles on her nose and about a million
 freckles everywhere on her that I can
 see and maybe more on places where I
 can't, and since more of her is covered up
 than naked then that makes infinity
 so no wonder she teaches Sunday School, she's
 so close to God on that account alone.
 I want to marry her one day and it
 would help a lot if she felt the same way
 but I think there's a law against that. But
 if we kept our love a secret until
 I'm old enough to court her then we're sure
 to be the happiest couple around,
 forget that since she's fifteen years older
 odds are she'll die on me. I hope there's time
 for us to have a couple of babies
 and we're married long enough to see them
 grown and out of our way before she dies
 of old age and leaves me all alone, though
 I'll visit her grave every Sunday
 and sit beside her and listen to her
  
 tell me one of those good old stories like
 she used to years ago, when I was her
 student, stories about how Jesus raised
 Lazarus from the dead, and Moses, who
 parted the Red Sea, and Joseph and his
 mean brothers, and his coat, and Pharoah's dreams,
 and David and Goliath, and Saul knocked
 off his ass and changing his name to Paul.
 She'll have to speak up, though, from where she is,
 dead and in her coffin and waiting for
 Judgement Day so that her soul will go to
 God, and since she's a sure bet for Heaven
 then maybe I'll hear her better from up
 there, or however that works--I'm not real
 sure of my facts. But anyway I'll die,
 too, and if I rate maybe join her there
 in Heaven, and kiss her, if we've still got
 lips. But a lot has to happen before
 now and then--Miss Hooker has got to fall
 and hard, and I'm not too good at romance
 so I'll pray like Hell to God that He will
 put a kind of spell on her for me. If
 not then I'll have to marry someone else.
 Then I'll never get to count those freckles
 in the dark, in the bed, in the same bed,
 in the bed we share, Miss Hooker and I
 and God makes three. But He'd better watch out
 --I saw her first. Well, not exactly. He
 saw her first. But damn it, I saw her best.
  
  
  
 Springs
  
 My brother's on his death-bed and we're twins.
 It's not a bed now but a place to die.
 It's like looking at me. One day, I know,
 someone will. He got the bad heart. I took
 most of the good one--I was born first.
 Funny how you lose a life in minutes:
 Come closer, I say. I mean, he says. Yes,
 I say. One of us is weeping. Which one?
 We're identical, after all, as near
 to each other as possible. That's close
 
 enough, he says. (We don't like to be crowded).
 We were born together, he says, more or
 less. Makes sense that we should die together.
 He laughs. I laugh. But it's not real laughter,
 just nerves. Just fear. Uh--that is real laughter.
 I've got a few minutes left yet, he says.
 Me, too, I say, somewhat stupidly. No
 need for you to hang around, he says, and
 besides, it's time to let our sisters in.
 Well, I say, we're twins. I ought to be with
 you all the way. Uh, I mean--oh, you know
 what I mean. He laughs. Don't make me laugh, he
 
 cries. It hurts too damned much. Should be enough
 I'm dying--I don't want to go in pain.
 No, I say. I mean, yes: it isn't fair.
 What's on the other side, he asks. Dunno,
 I say. If you can, please let me know. Give
 me a sign. Two knocks for Heaven, one for
 the other place. And none if it's like here.
 But he's already dozing in the sleep
 that segues into death. Then he blinks
 
 and says, O, shit, it's more of the same.
 And I laugh until it hurts, and he smiles
 either through the pain or it's how pain smiles.
 You son of a bitch, he says. Stop it. Then
 he's gone again, this time for good, at least
 
 forever. That was seven years ago.
 I have children and show them their uncle.
 He looks just like you, one says. Stupid, they're
 twins, says the other. Daddy, if you're twins,
 why didn't you both die at the same time?
 Uh, I say. It doesn't work that way. (By
 It I mean Life, of course). I want to say,
  
Well, I did die, in a manner of speaking.
 But that's poetry and bad poetry
 at that, and worst of all, it's poignancy.
 And even worse is all the happiness.
 
       
 Divine Comedy
  
 When I die and not that I want to but
 I'll try 'most anything once I'll stay up
 as late as I want and eat as much
 pizza as I like and tacos, too, and
 ice cream and popcorn and peanut butter
 and cherry pie and fried shrimp and French fries
 and in general make a glutton of
 myself yet feel no bad effects or what's
 Heaven for if you can't sin once and for
 all the ways you weren't supposed to back on
 Earth when you were living but afraid of
  
 death? Maybe the reward for getting saved
 and not sinning at all except for how
 all people do because of Adam and
 Eve is to sin all you want in Heaven
 and as for Hell, well, maybe there you have
 to play it square, maybe Satan tortures
 folks there by making it so perfect that
 you'll be in agony forever but just
  
 imagine all the ice cream sodas and
 parfaits and banana splits you can choke
 down but nothing bad comes of them as on
 Earth, no fat or lousy nerves from sugar or
 cavities or upset stomach, God's too
 damn good to me and I'd tell myself to
 get the goodies now but that's a sin and
 I'd wind up in Hell where things are better
 and that would kill me twice. I'm delicate.

  

 Salvation
  
 I guess I'll have to die one day, that's what
 they say at Sunday School and it's never
 too early to prepare myself because
 if I've been good I go to Heaven and
 if bad I go to Hell but I want to
 stay on Earth forever but no dice, my
 body can until its atoms-only
 remain but what makes me me goes on some
 -where and I don't make the rules, of course, though
 if I could change them I would, I'd never
 die but dwell on Earth forever, always
 aging but never growing so much that
 I get too feeble to get around so
 after Sunday School today I told my
 teacher how I feel and that I'm quitting 
 church and Sunday School, which made her cry, so
 then I took it all back and me as well
  
 and gave us back to her. But not to God.
  
 

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.