Photography © Edward S. Gault

 

Sometimes when you’re dead you’re so dead

you never live again, resurrection
be damned and maybe that’s what Hell is, all
I know is when I die I’ll learn what’s what,
that’s what they say at church and Sunday School
and maybe they’re right but right or wrong there’s
no way in the Afterlife to let folks
know who are still alive what the score is,
maybe that’s why I’m afraid of death when
I’m afraid of it that is, when it’s not
my friend, which is most of the time save for
Halloween and Christmas and Easter, death
for those holidays seems to work out well
even though I hate it when life comes to
that. I forget who died on Christmas Day.

 

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.

Edward S. Gault is a poet and fine arts photographer living in Brighton, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Spectrum, Wilderness House Literary Review, Interlude, Currents, and Encore.