Image courtesy of Petrie Collection, Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library
Jenny started to know
the passing faces of nightshift
who said, “You go, girl”
better than friends and family
that first summer of mismatched hours
as whispers breezed the mill
about ‘kids abandoned at day-care,
partner on the juice’
turned to soft winds of divorce
under-heard in the salt machinery
of the factory cafeteria.
On the floor, she kept her broom
between the yellow lines, even when steam
screamed from a torn gasket
’til she spotted Bob’s silver mane
along the carton line, roaring
his shit at someone’s ear-muffed head.
“Wipe yourself when you’re done,
prick. Or, see that machine over there?
I’ll drive it so far up your ass
It’ll clean your moustache.”
The girls on the line keeled
and reeled like feeding gulls.
Source: John B. Lee (comp.) Arborealis: A Canadian Poetry Anthology, 2018. Toronto: The Ontario Poetry Society, 2018.
Crewed was a winner of the Judge’s Choice award of the Ontario Poetry Society contest. Inman’s poem Figure Eights won the first prize, his poem Rock Paper Scissors won the third prize, and his poem Rally also won a Judge’s Choice award in the same contest.
Declared a ‘people’s poet’ by John B. Lee and Dr. Elspeth Cameron, for his blue collar style, Inman’s work has earned him a variety of grants and contest awards. A first chapbook, Hanging on a Nail, with two other Niagara Poets at Sigilate Press, sold over 500 copies. And a first Trade book, The War Poems: Screaming at Heaven from Black Moss Press, received a review from Canlit #223, who compared his work with Atwood and Itani. Keith lives and writes in Niagara.
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