sunday school poems
by Gale Acuff
Answerable
After Sunday School I was walking home
when I remembered I'd forgotten my
workbook so I walked back to the classroom
where I saw Miss Hooker putting her gear
away into her pocketbook so I
strolled up to her and said Hello again
and she smiled before she spoke, she almost
did both at the same time - is there any
-thing God can't do? - and then I told her that
I was back for my workbook and she said
that it was good of me to remember
it and even better to return for
it so I said Yes ma'am--what could I say? -
but anyway I added Goodbye again
and then Miss Hooker said Yes, Gale, until
next Sunday, goodbye, so I said Goodbye
once more, I didn't want to leave her un
-answered even though I did answer but
it wasn't an answer, I was the one
who said Goodbye first. It's a miracle.
First Parent
After Sunday School today I warned my
teacher that she's going to burn because she
said Hell and damn again and she says them
a lot but she told me that she says them
for instructional purposes only
and that she doesn't mean to curse--she means
cuss, of course--because that's a sin, cussing
is, and she's sure that I never cuss
myself, and then I blushed, and then she said
Oh, if you do, Dear, quickly ask the Lord
to forgive you so I said Yes ma'am, I
don't want to go to Hell like you will, then
she frowned and sent me home and something's not
quite right about this. Maybe this is love.
Uran
One day I'll die and go to Heaven, my
soul anyway, to be judged, and if I'm
good I stay for Eternity but if
not it's Eternity, too, but in
Hell, and this is what I learned in Sunday
School today but then again it's what I
learn every Sunday there but this morning
I stayed home and watched cartoons and learned that
Astro Boy has a little sister and
she's cute and I'm ten years old but still I
know what love is, it isn't what it is
or at least at church and Sunday School they
don't cover it so I'll bring it up next
time. I mean if I go back. But I won't.
If I'm going to go to Hell when I
croak then I don't want to die at all, I
want to live forever and never leave
the land of life, that would be here, the Earth,
more specifically church and Sunday
School and regular school and the drug store
where I buy comic books and the Korn Dawg
King where after God if I show up with
my church bulletin I get a free Coke
though actually it's Royal Crown or
Double Cola but they all taste the same
to me save Pepsi, there's also Sprite but
one day when I'm dead there won't be any
unless it's in Hell or Heaven, Hell
for me most likely. But that's why it's free.
Nobody lives forever unless they're
dead first is the story or anecdote
at church and Sunday School, a paradox
is what our teacher calls it and that means
having something at least two ways at once
and maybe that's the hardest thing about
life, how it kind of balances out by
not being too much of one thing and not
another but of course the living must
deal with the non-living and the end of
their lives and the end of all existence.
At our church that's the end of the world
as we know it or don't--it evens out
somehow. But I'll know more once I'm kaput
though I wish that I didn't know much now.
BIO: Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in fourteen countries and has 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, 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. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.