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PoetryJanuary 28, 2013

Threshold

Mystical Dialogue by Sonja Dimovska

“Mystical Dialogue” by Sonja Dimovska

Sometimes after Sunday School I walk her

to her car, Miss Hooker, my teacher. I

want to marry her one day so it’s good

practice to open the door for her and

watch her get in, but not too closely, she’s

got legs, then shut it after she’s settled

in and remind her to fasten her seat

belt. Then I take two or three steps back so

I’ll feel a little safer and she turns

her engine over, the car’s I mean, and

waves goodbye and I see her lips move but

I can’t hear her, she drives an old Chevette

and she’s going to need a muffler soon

and I’d tell her so but I’m just a kid,

ten years old, and she’s 25 or so

and my teacher as well and a grown-up

woman on top of all that so I mind

my manners just like she was my mother,

which I hate to think about because she’d

make a better wife for me when I’m old

enough, if only she’ll stay single ’til

I can ask her for a date and take her

out in my own car then even if it’s

just Father’s. Maybe I’ll quit school and work

and save enough for a down payment, then

buy my own. I’ll be too old for Sunday

School then, Miss Hooker’s third-grade class I mean,

and I’ll be shaving and have a man’s voice

and maybe I’ll learn to smoke and drink beer,

my folks do so I know how it’s done but

I need practice even though those are sins,

Miss Hooker says, so we’ll have us a talk

and if she says that she won’t go out with

a man who smokes and drinks, I guess that’s our

first argument and we’re still only pals

but I want something more, some sweet romance

that leads to courting and engagement and

marriage and honeymooning and children,

in that order. I’ve got it written down.

I don’t know just where babies come from but

I’ve got a feeling her legs are involved

because when I see them, see them up close,

my own feel frail. And there’s the honeymoon

–who knows what happens then? We’ll leave the church

all married-up and get into the back

seat of a Pontiac and I guess go

to the motel out on the highway and

I’ll carry her across the threshold, that’s

a fancy set of words for through the door,

and plop her down on one of the beds, no

single bed for us, we’ll want something nice

with a lot of space, then go back out and

carry in our bags and the extra one

I’ll bring with checkers and cards and Yahtzee

and Strat-o-Matic baseball and some snacks

and then we’ll be in business, and there’s free

cable. And when we’ve had enough Go Fish

 

it’s time for bed and because we’re married

we might as well lie in bed together,

the same bed because we’re also buddies,

but between then and the end of Go Fish

we’ll have to see each other naked, which

means without any clothes or damn few, so

maybe she can go into the bathroom

and take hers off and I’ll stay outside and

take mine off, I mean outside the bathroom,

not the door to our motel room, ha ha,

and we’ll meet halfway, which makes some sense

because we’re a team now, on account of

we’re husband and wife, or is that wife and

husband, or maybe both.. I’ll get in

bed first and shut my eyes and she’ll come out

when I call, Okay, Miss Hooker, I’m not

looking, the coast is clear, it’s time to sleep,

and she’ll say, Okay, no peeking, cover

your head with the blanket, please, and I’ll say

Sure thing, you can trust me, and even if

I peek it might still be too dark to see

and breaking a promise is a sin and

how many times has she said that sinning

gets you Hell? I don’t want to go to Hell,

I just got married, and not when I die,

either. Then she crawls into bed and shakes

hands and we kiss and if we’re tired we’ll fall

asleep and we will be, being married’s

hard. I might ask her just before we do

when exactly the first baby will come

and then she can lay it all out for me.

Before Sunday School last week Bill Nutt

told me that the husband and wife rub and

rub against each other while they’re lying

there and a few months later she feels it

in her belly and–whoops–there’s a baby.

That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.

When Miss Hooker drives away I just stand

and stare until she leaves the parking lot.

Then I walk the half-mile back home. Mother

and Father are reading the newspaper

on the front porch. They don’t come to church, they

already know where babies come from and

all the dope. They tell me it’s a secret

and that I have to be older to know.

How much older, I asked them. Old enough

to know better, they said. That old, I said.

~ Gale Acuff

 

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He is the author of 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 university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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