Jesse DeLong
That's It
for Keosha
There is something degenerative about you.
you get out of bed, into the single bulb of the bathroom.
your hair is tousled, your eyes, gin-shot.
skin-pocked and bags that look like bruises.
your face—a carcass bloated in heat.
the pale fat of your arms, red rashes under the elbows,
a few white pubic hairs but sienna in your mustache.
you are in your thirties now
and she loves you anyways.
that’s the whole poem.
that’s all it needs to be.
Jesse DeLong debut poetry book, The Amateur Scientist's Notebook, was published by Baobab Press. Other work has appeared in Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, American Letters and Commentary, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Typo, as well as the anthologies Best New Poets 2011 and Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner. His chapbooks, Tearings, and Other Poems and Earthwards, were released by Curly Head Press. Other than writing, he teaches composition and literature at Louisiana State University.
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