Two-by-four





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.


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