Song for the Burdened

Jesse DeLong
· in ,

A can of gasoline weighted the left side of his body, a scale so familiar to his life, a scale layered over the burr of wind through trees, the hum of the porch light and a dog straining its fears into the night. As he walked, the gasoline sloshed through the empty space in the container and he began to mouth, as if he didn’t yet have strength for words, hallelujah. In a long arm offered up without expectations, streetlamps filtered the living room. The smell of gasoline, mildew and sweat, hallelujah. He poured a path from bedroom to bedroom, working the same halls where everything worth framing on a mantel (the pictures of his family, his son’s graduation certificate) had lightened, losing their luster to overexposure, cheap prints and sun. When the match struck, hair singed on his ankle, and he walked outside, and watched an orange glow like an alarm sounding unheard in an empty room, hallelujah.

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Jesse DeLong lives in Tuscaloosa, AL. His work can be found or is forthcoming from Word Riot, Copper Nickel, The Offending Adam, 751 Magazine, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Tearings, and Other Poems, was released by Curley Head Press.