At Sunday School they tell me I'm going

By Gale Acuff

At Sunday School they tell me I'm going

to Hell when I die, all my many fails

and transgressions and trespasses but sin

whatever else you call it so I need

to get right with God if I want to get

to Heaven someday, when I die, that is,

which could be almost right away. But not

so fast--I could die on my very last

day, whenever that will be; I don't want

to die at all, actually, but at

church and Sunday School I've got no choice, just

the decision of where I'll wind up in

the Afterlife, Heaven or Hell. To live

eternally I have to die but just

once, they tell me. This had better be good.

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Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in fourteen 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 Review, 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, 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.