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Keepsake<br />
By Gale Acuff<br />
I'm ten years old and I'm going to die<br />
one day so I'd better get ready now<br />
because it could happen at any time,<br />
even if I don't die by accident<br />
--run over catching the school bus or shot<br />
by a burglar or pushed out a window<br />
or choked by a hamburger pickle or<br />
struck by lightning or brained by a baseball.<br />
You never know. And then gone, I'll come to,<br />
and look back on my life and what happened<br />
in it to end it, and shake my head<br />
if I still have one, one that's blood and meat<br />
and bone, and think what a shame I lost it,<br />
my life. I'll be a ghost or an angel,<br />
maybe, done with doom for keeps. And then I'll<br />
pick myself up and dust myself off and<br />
get on with it, my life of being dead<br />
forever. Which is what forever is.<br />
Author bio: Gale writes: “I have had poetry published<br />
in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review, Coe<br />
Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Arkansas<br />
Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, South<br />
Dakota Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other<br />
journals. I have authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse<br />
Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of<br />
My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). I have taught university English in the<br />
US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.<br />
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