Blush
I love everybody but most of all
it’s Miss Hooker, my Sunday School teacher,
we’re going to get married one day, don’t
ask me how I know, I guess God told me
somehow, whispered in my ear when I was
asleep, which was good of Him because I
love Miss Hooker more than I love
Him or Jesus or the Holy Ghost, which
I think is what they call blasphemy, she’s
something like the Golden Calf but let me
explain in case God’s listening or reading
over my shoulder, if He can read, I
think He can write anyway, didn’t He
write the Ten Commandments, at least in that
movie and I think in Technicolor
but anyway I was going to say
before God catches onto me and damns
me to Hell that I love Miss Hooker
more because somehow together we can
have babies but come to think of it she
and God could, too, it’s called the virgin birth
and it happened to Mary and lo and
behold she had Jesus. What’s a virgin?
I’m not really sure but then I’m only
ten years old to Miss Hooker’s 25
and after class today I asked her if
she is one, a virgin I mean, and she
went all red in the face, it’s called blushing,
it’s as close as you get to blood without
the bleeding and that should tell me something
but it didn’t. She said a gentleman
doesn’t ask a lady such a question,
not if he wants her to respect him. So
I said Yes ma’am and when I got home from
Sunday School, I felt like I was baptized
again, I asked Mother the same thing and
she chuckled and said, Yes, and Father burst
out laughing, so I joined them. There you go.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Concho River Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. I have 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.