Gale Acuff

I’m ten years old and I don’t want to die

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

but I have to someday, maybe today
or tomorrow or next week or when I'm
100 but it's going to transpire
and sometimes I wish I'd never been born
if all that happens to me in the end
is the end so I asked my Sunday School
teacher why folks die, they never even
asked to be born and she laughed and said Gale,
all I can say is read your Bible and
pray for understanding and sooner or
later God will grant it unto you
and I said With my lousy luck I'll be
praying and right in the middle I'll die
and she said All I can say is Amen.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and 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, 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. He has taught tertiary English courses in the U.S., PR China, and Palestine.