When the Dancer

Catches Fire

      —for Emma Livry, 24 September 1842 to 26 July 1863

​All the men applaud
a fabric invented      to capture the light      tulle
spun from factory bobbins     in the city of Tulle.
Women can now appear      on stage      like floating candles.

If you are a French ballerina      in the 19th-Century
laced      in a skintight bodice      romance
might feel like writhing      in a billowing gown

       or swimming      a gossamer sash.

They say      Emma Livry is the illegitimate daughter
of Baron Charles de Chassiron      which starts a rhyme:
Can so skinny a rat be the daughter of so round a cat?

But when the stage is illumined by gaslight
     —over one-hundred tiny lanterns—
                    you hear           gasps
      rise from the audience.            Spectral
             you balance      en pointe      a fairy in moonlight

​

until the hem of your costume

     brushes      one of sixty-six wing-lights
            the gaslight flicker          snatches the tulle

        a flimsy gown      twirling into flame
                 a firefly      exploding.

The newspapers say your burns
     were magnified      when you clutched
          the burning fabric      to your torso      out of modesty

     ...died later      from complications.

Leaving your body      you rise again
      re-balance yourself
             in the charred rafters      of a theatre.
                                        All the men      applaud.

Gabrielle Langley is the author of Fairy Tale (Sable Books, 2023) and Azaleas on Fire (Sable Books, 2019). She has won the Lorene Pouncey Poetry Award and the Vivian Nellis Memorial Award for Creative Writing. Ms. Langley also served as a co-editor for the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the global epidemic of violence against women (Sable Books, 2016). Additional information is available at www.gabriellelangley.com.