Cycle
I travel most often by bike in summer, streaming
along the dirt tracks between burgeoning houses.
or scanning for glints of clear glass or green
among the weedy grass in the verges between road
and sidewalk. Pop bottles to trade in. If one catches
my eye like treasure, I screech to a halt, flip up
my kickstand to nab the bottle, put it in my bike
basket. Rattles in the wire cage as I ride on.
Disappointment at broken glass, or beer bottles
that are useless to me. At the corner store, pop
bottles are worth two cents and a comic costs
twelve. At the secondhand bookstore, well-
thumbed mags have 10¢ prices; how many more
could I have bought in those distant days of dimes. My bike knows its way through the easements
to the Shopping Centre, fancy name for what
we’d later call a strip mall, though it does hold
the Safeway with its automatic door whoosh,
air conditioning inside. The suburban toughs
lean listless on bike racks at the corner store
on hot summer afternoons. Going past them
for chocolate bars or comic books is to run
a gauntlet, their taunts and catcalls. Two girls
from my class hang out with the toughs, jean
jackets or leather despite the heat, teased hair.
They don’t know me and I don’t know them
on these days of cringe and hunch, trying hard
to not be seen, to never elicit their sneers.
The Ways We Break Our Wildness
Slant light wavering
from the lamp, tree bark
in her hair. She falls onto
her shell-pink couch, a coil
of comfort. Does it matter,
this freefalling? Clarity
is an icy morning. She’s felt
it drizzling away, an exhale
that hangs for an instant
in the cold air then
dissipates.
Ghost breath whispers to her
its reed of wind. A blast
of noise as the door opens,
only the scrunch of footsteps
on snow once it’s closed.
Magnesium blue, a settling
phrase stitched in the
silence.
No limits to the beyond
of birds, their colours
a pulse in her throat.
Frances Boyle’s latest books are Openwork and Limestone (Frontenac House 2022) and Light-carved Passages (Doubleback Books 2024). She is also the author of Seeking Shade, a short story collection, Tower, a novella and Skin Hunger, a forthcoming novel. Recent and upcoming publications include work in Glass Poetry, The Ex-Puritan, PRISM international, Ampersand, The South Dakota Review and Vallum. Visit www.francesboyle.com and follow @francesboyle19 on Twitter and Instagram.