Dirty Joke
I love God a Hell of a lot more than
I love Satan or myself or any
-body else or anything I swear to
Miss Hooker after Sunday School class so
she keeps me after and has me erase
the board and straighten the chairs and empty
the trash and stack the hymnbooks and wash her
desk and chair, for good measure, she says, that's
from the Bible if I'm not mistaken,
shaken, not stirred, no, that's James Bond, then it's
pressed and rolled down, or rolled down and pressed, or
something like that, Miss Hooker hit us with
that last Sunday, I'm only ten years old
but what's happened to my memory? and
when I finished, and to be honest I
was hoping she might pay me for my work
but I guess that's why they call it charity,
somehow you get suckered for working for
free--when I finished Miss Hooker said not
to use a bad word the way that I did
which is the way that Satan does, she meant
that if I say Hell in class I'd better
say it the right way, even after class,
so I had to ask her why Satan must
ever say Hell like a bad word, I mean
he's Satan for Christ's sake, better than sin
in some strange way, I mean he doesn't
need to curse, he's already in Hell and
already damned for Eternity, all
Eternity like Miss Hooker says, why
say the same damn thing especially if
you're not human and being human's what
counts? At first Miss Hooker looked angry, then
I could tell she was just about to cry
so I tried to interrupt and make her
happy, I said Miss Hooker, wanna hear
a dirty joke? and before she could say
nix I punched her, I mean with the punch line:
A white horse fell in a mud puddle and
then I started laughing, it really is
just about the funniest damn joke in
the world but when I was through Miss Hooker
looked at me like I'd hypnotized her, which
I wasn't trying to do but maybe when
we're married and on our honeymoon, she's
25 and I'm--like I say and it's
a fact--only 10, but I can wait if
she can and even if she can't, that's how
much I love her--Miss Hooker said, and these
are her very words, I don't get it, Gale.
Then I wept. There's no saving some poor souls.
Jerk
Today Miss Hooker told me she loved me,
my Sunday School teacher, I mean I fell
asleep in class for a split-second and
she was looking into my eyes, both of
them, and I saw me there, two of me be
-cause she has two eyes and both good and so
doubled-up like that I reacted
to her words of love, there were three of them
--I love you--not counting Gale, the fourth but
I couldn't describe where we were inside
my dream, at the ball park or in a bed
-room or having corn dogs and waffle fries
at the Korn Dog & Waffle Fries King, some
day I'll get my first part-time job there, I
don't know what that means not knowing where words
are spoken that mean lots but then I jerked
awake to see the real Miss Hooker in
our portable classroom where when you walk
across the linoleum and plywood
floor your steps sound like religion speaking
and she was giving me dirty looks, not
obscene but I mean wholly angry and
said, Welcome back, Gale, I love you, too, and
my classmates were hooting or was it just
angels. Now I hate her guts. She's lying.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, McNeese Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, MarylandPoetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Orbis, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).
He has taught tertiary-level English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank. He currently teaches in the Department of Modern Languages at Arab American University in Zababdeh, Palestine.