Lightproof
In that elastic, makeshift time between evening
and when the dark, invited, shows up. Night,
get real, you’re a materialist, physics
help you, insects chafe each other
in the semiliquid air. I, too,
vibrate in your dark. I spool around the driveway
reheating the tar. Pull the shades
behind me and the moon counts down.
Have I seen you take a detour? Even
once? You hum. You look sometimes
at the camera. 9pm in July you seem
withheld, almost, and for that reason
lit. Emphasized. Available. Animal. Or you would be.
Emma De Lisle is an associate editor of Peripheries and co-Editor-in-Chief of Mark. Last year, she served as Poetry Chair for the 2025 Massachusetts Book Awards. She studies religion and literature at Harvard and lives with her husband in western Massachusetts.