by Gale Acuff
I’ll be dead before you know it, before
I know it anyway and maybe then
or I mean afterward I won’t know it
at all, ditto death, I’ll be alive some
-how and maybe waiting for another
life-to-come, maybe another after
that, but all I get at church is that we’re
all in this for the eternal life of
it, I guess by it I mean the life we
know now which is at least one-half of what’s
to be and probably a lot less so
after Sunday School today I asked my
teacher What if we die and there’s nothing
hereafter but she just smiled and said Pray.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, 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.