Stops

Cheek railed on a window, eyes

unable to endure the little
light of the bus,

the Korean man next to me slops spit
around his lips—Like I am the only one

who tolerates
this fucking sun, a fading star,

the way another passenger
touches me if he knows it is far

from his stop & wants to sit where sweat blooms.

To flicker: as if we didn’t already
imagine our lives like an old film reel

burning up before the end. This is wrong.

There is no movement into another, no
line scrawling forward, only

dimensions you know not dimensions,

actions, but not your actions, speech
but not your speech, movement, but not

real movement. I am

sweating as he stares at me.
He folds & unfolds
his map.

Please, stop. The breaks of the bus gorge

on their own wheezing. Someone gets off
or doesn’t.

Jesse DeLong works as Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. His 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.