Warm Nocturne

Dear, this porch light is driving me crazy and forgive me

for fornicating electrically. With my head buzzing

I don’t even know my own face. With my face

aging I can’t even beckon over my shoulder.

When you squared your pinch against your brow

I could not secede so I would kneel.

Maybe you are a religious man and I am

confessing my desire to be distilled

or dirtied but when I look up to the dark

inscrutable space beneath your brim I lack

the luster to lick my lips. Our flanks flicker

in the sizzling toward sure outage.

If I were a horse I could blame the horse

flies. I only want to shoot out that light

with my 20 gauge and harvest darkness, silence.

Addie Palin received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana, where she was the Richard Hugo Scholar. She has recently returned to Missoula after a stint working in the Chicago advertising community. Her first manuscript was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, the Colorado Prize and the National Poetry Series, among others.