Two-by-four
In the middle of Sunday School class what
did I do but throw up all over my
workbook just barely missing my hymnal
all my breakfast, grape Tang and Malt-O-Meal,
without warning, my throwing up that is,
as if God had just struck me or is that
stricken, good thing it wasn't regular
school, so while my classmates laughed and yelled Gross
Miss Hooker took me out on the porch steps
of our portable building, steps that my
father helped to build over last weekend,
two-by-fours from the Cash & Carry-out
and not the best of pine, either but no
knots where they most count, I mean if you don't
want them, so I sat down on the bottom
step with Miss Hooker looking down at me
from on top, my back was turned but I felt
her above me, even her hands on her
hips, even how lucky they were, her hips
I mean, to have her hands on them, ditto
her hands to be resting on her hips, and
that was enough to make me spew the rest
of what I had for breakfast that morning,
apple slices. I clean forgot. I'm free.
Gale Acuff
Gale Acuff has published in Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review,
Coe Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida
Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina
Quarterly, 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). I have taught university English in
the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.
Tags:
Poetry