I hate everybody but I'm only

by Gale Acuff

ten years old, not old enough to know how

to hate at least in my case, I go to

church and Sunday School religiously so

I wind up forgiving everybody

whether they’ve hurt me or nix and it’s not

usually that they have, at least not

directly, except for that one fight on

the playground with my best friend in first grade

and he won or I lost or I let him

win which is sometimes easier itself

than winning since you can know how you’ll fight

again even if you know and he knows

you’ll lose, it’s kind of like sacrifice, you

sort of die for his sins. Man, he hates that.

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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, and many other journals. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.