Wheels / Light
by Gale Acuff
Wheels
I don't want to go to Hell when I die
but I could do worse I tell my Sunday
School teacher—I might go to Heaven where
I just know I won't fit in, sin becomes
me, I'm more used to it, that's how life is
on Earth, my home or home to my home
and town and country and state and school and
church and our portable trailer-classroom
that has wheels but rolls nowhere, nowhere on
Earth anyway and Miss Hooker asks me
Don't you think it transports us somewhere, Gale
and I say I wish it would take me to
your house and blush and she blushes and it's
love and maybe not sin's fault but it helps.
Light
Nobody loves me, not even God, not
even Him, especially not Him I
tell my Sunday School teacher after class
so she'll hug me again, she's like Mother
in that way but not the same woman so
everything's pretty safe and I won't go
to Hell, if anyone will she will, my
Sunday School teacher I mean, I'll get off
light because I'm only ten years old though
she said in class last week that you can't fool
God, He knows what you're scheming no matter
how hard you try not to tip Him off but
then again that's between the two of them
—I'm innocent. Guilty, but innocent.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in eleven countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.
