One day I'm dead and in Heaven or Hell

By Gale Acuff

but still dead I said to my Sunday School

teacher after class but she only laughed

and said Gale, if you make Heaven then you'll

eat those words but up in Heaven (I re

-minded her) there's no eating because there's

no body but she said Oh, you forget

about the all-new bodies we'll get there

and the manna that God dropped down to feed

the Israelites so I said Well, ma'am,

there's no proof of any of that, they're just

old stories by old men in an old time

so she whispered Gale, we're in church so keep

your voice low so I said But He can hear

everything and then she shouted Gotcha!

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Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen 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 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, George Washington 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.