folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
Combustion
i.
He lit the fire for me last
night,
and a half-dozen candles in lieu
of roses. He brought out china
plates,
silver forks, tall candle-sticks.
A silver flash of wine poured
for warmth in our home, our
hearth
just for heart-warming. Dance of
fire,
slow smolder to reds and black,
the clinkers’ glint, the mad gash
of them.
ii
melted wax puddled on the wooden
tabletop, a seal to fix some
promise
to myself. Thumbprint impressed,
envelope wax-thickened. The fire
warms the wax, the fire consumes
the wax inside candle’s hollowing
core, a clear pool it slurps
from.
iii.
Firebird spreads its wings,
—rebirth
a sapphire, a trembling
semiprecious tear, a note
sung so pure it melts the stone.
A placeholder song for the
antique
sorrow I finger like a rosary,
each
bead winking in the light of the
last
candle, fire confined to the
wick’s tip.
iv.
Remembering
destruction. Phoenix
rising, the air too thick to
breathe.
the gulps, the greedy maw of fire
chomping through wood and lathe,
soft fabric candyfloss to it,
furniture
like celery stalks, crunched. A
swell
of heat, a shimmer in air as
chemicals
off-gas, perfumed with poison.
The mirage-
making heat, the alteration of
sensation,
rapacious fire. It is hungry,
ravenous. A beast
whose appetite must be sated.
v.
Ice in a bucket. A house fire
in winter
so anomalous, the firebucket
contents
freeze as they are thrown, arc of
hoses
turning to ice-bows, precious
water
holds a moment in air, then
crashes
to slick ground. Is my yielding
to flame
like the numbing burn off ice?
Will the bite
of cold assume the acrid scent of
regret,
taste in my mouth like damp ashy
residue?
Previously published in Glass Poetry Journal, April 2, 2025: https://www.glass-poetry.com/journal/2025/april/boyle-combustion.html
latchkey fragments
the credit crows
acrid the
bric-a-brac crisp
as it falls the wall of the
valley vain and holy
hear it wail a welter of shallow tinkering
the flag a mint you grab mount to your mouth
the instruments puff the notes through apart
in your heart the hard spittle of the better
body
knot of muscle a trickle from the bottle
hanker a hank of rope to plait apart
a dram of sifted
salt you wept in the
whipping of planted banners
the flying flag a craggy face to the south
of the house a slough where you can sluff
off
the habit holy or in
vain the timing tepid
the wisdom an absent
testament what words
bar the answer you
anxious a murmuration
the birds’
angle folding a
turnkey tempest of air
Previously published in The Maynard, Vol 14, No. 2 (final issue), Fall 2021. https://www.themaynard.org/Vol14No2/latchkeyfragments.php
What I’m working on/through at the moment: Having recently completed the edits on my novel, Skin Hunger, I am turning back to other projects. One is to continue writing further stories, both realistic and speculative-tinged, to include in my short fiction manuscript-in-progress, which I hope to bring to a complete draft stage over the course of 2026. I am also slowly adding poems to my manuscript, currently titled Meniscus Blister, an expansion of my Fairleigh Dickinson University Press chapbook, that focuses on family and mental illness through the medium of water in its various forms. Though fairly time-intensive, helping to run both VERSeFest, Ottawa’s poetry festival, and The League of Canadian Poets is gratifying in supporting community and getting to know even more writers,. I am also seeking out opportunities to read in various places around Canada when the novel comes out in the fall – please invite me!
Frances Boyle (she/her) [photo credit: Curtis Perry] is the prairie-raised, Ottawa-based author of three poetry collections, most recently Openwork and Limestone (Frontenac House 2022) and Light-carved Passages (DoubleBack Books 2024) as well as a Tower, a novella, and Seeking Shade, an award-winning book of short stories. Her debut novel, Skin Hunger, will be published by Guernica Editions in fall 2026. Recent publications include work in Anacapa Review, Wild Roof Journal, Ampersand Review, Public Reverie and South Dakota Review.