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.

Gale Acuff

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Forked

"When I died," I said to my Sunday School
teacher, "in my dream last night I went to
Heaven only halfway, the same for Hell,
on the way the path split into two and
naturally I couldn't go both ways
at the same time and I couldn't go back,
neither, no reverse-gear to me, just like
the transmission in our station wagon
so I decided just to stay where I
was, at the fork in the road you might say,
there would be my eternal life and that
way God couldn't get on my nerves, Jesus
neither, for Eternity, the same for
Satan. Then I woke up." Then she did, too.