Author: Andrew Porteus

Andrew Porteus is a retired librarian who started the Niagara Falls Poetry Project in 1998 in order to gather in one place the hundreds of poems that exist about Niagara Falls. Andrew returned to Brock University to get a Master of Art degree based on the website

Maid of the Mists (Niagara Waterfall) by Yehoash

yehoash
Yehoash (Solomom Bloomgarten)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

A hundred cubits running wide,
Green and silver is the raiment
Of the Maiden of the Mists.
Rainbows strung along the edges,
Suns and snows and rows of foam, 
Woven into plaits and braids.
Yo-ho!
Upon white cords,
Upon green bands,
Over stormy balustrades,
Leaps, besprinkles, the Maiden of the Mists,
Swims through glimmering bows of foam
The slender, slim and sinuous daughter of the mists.

                            [II]

Yearns the black forest,
Ten thousand years of lust,
Says the black, dense forest:
“Dance for me!
Fling open your green and silver raiments,
Tear apart the rainbows
And bare your form.
Mother-of-pearl thy breast,
White blossoms are thy loins.”

                       [III]

“Yo-ho, old forest,
I shall dance a dance for you;
Yo-ho, thou forest of black lusts,
I shall dance a dance for thee.”
On the green and gray stairway
Swings and sways the Maid of the Mists,
Chaste and laughing,
Nimble and pure,
Green and white,
Widely spread the trailings long,
All folds freely loosened,
All rainbows ablaze,
And leaps
To the deep roaring waters,
To the briskly roaring waters.

                   [IV]

“Yo-ho, old forest,
What of my thigh hast thou seen?”
“Yo-ho,
Whitest dust,
Snow and sun,
Pearls and crystals,
Veils and shawls—
Old forest of black lusts,
What of my loins hast thou seen?”

              [V]

Whitest dust,
Sun and snow above
And an iris of rainbow
Dances the Mist Maiden
With the buoyant roaring waters,
With the sprightly roaring waters.
“Yo-ho, old forest,
What of my white thigh hast thou seen?”

Source: Jehiel B. Cooperman and Sarah H. Cooperman (selectors and translators).  America in Yiddish Poetry: An Anthology.  New York: Exposition Press, 1967.

Yehoash is the pen name of Solomon Bloomgarten. Read about Yehoash 

Thanks to Sammy Hacker for bringing this poem to my attention.

Niagara in Winter by Meyer Ziml Tkatch

tkatch
Postcard of Niagara Falls in Winter
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library

An overgrown thicket
With locks flowing wild,
With steam from the mouth
Which envelops the face,
With the haste of a shot,
With the roar of a forest,
Springs into the vale from a mount,
As though to break the neck
And to sprain the feet—
Niagara, the giant.

And the winter caprice
With its icy yoke
As in chase for a beast
Niagara pursues.
Not in vain howls the wind,
Like a pack of dogs,
And with the snow shot in vain
Shoots the cloud, shoots again,
Desolated all around,
All around becomes stoned,
As though him not meant.
Never, at all, stops
Niagara’s gallop.

Source: Jehiel B. Cooperman and Sarah H. Cooperman (selectors and translators).  America in Yiddish Poetry: An Anthology.  New York: Exposition Press, 1967.

Read about Meyer Kiml Tkatch

Thanks to Sammy Hacker for bringing this poem to my attention.

 

Rally by Keith Inman

rally
Keith Inman

Donna needed bras;
Jesse socks; the kids
candy. So they said
yanking her sleeve,
their heads tilted, pleading
as they trooped
through the Monday mall.

The food court draped
with jean’d students,
spread across tables,
sleeping on the floor.

Lines of dominoes lead
up a ramp to a rocket ship;
multiple lanes ran to spinning wheels
and a Chinese tomb of soldiers.

A sign said they were building
a computer.  Donna wondered
what dominoes could answer
when Rachel pulled her finger,
“Why are some missing?”

“Jesus tiles,” an old man said,
a poppy tray in his arm. “They save
the whole thing from going off.”

Just then a clinking hail of glass
ran across the floor to end
before the rocket.

Rachel’s face lit up, “I’d like to see that.”

“You have no idea,” he said,
placing a poppy in her outstretched hand.

Source: John B. Lee (comp.) Arborealis: A Canadian Poetry Anthology, 2018.  Toronto: The Ontario Poetry Society, 2018.

Rally 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 Crewed  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. 

Crewed by Keith Inman

crewed
Interior of a Headstone Manufacturing Factory, Believed to be Rigg Brothers Monuments on Queen Street , Niagara Falls, ON.
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. 

Niagara Falls in Winter by Israel Emiot

emiot
Dove Overlooking the American Falls
Photo by Andrew Porteus

The tale of Niagara Falls
Long since has been white-bearded.
The elder would overtake you with noise—
Why be so gloomy, weary?
O eternity!

Just here my gaze is fixed
On things of every day.
Merely the tiny little day
Of a bit of joviality, of a dirge dash:
A reflective pane
Of an abandoned house
That mirrors
The sunset red
On a dove;
That hovers on wings
Of death,
And exhausts in the air
The mite of life that is destined her
On earth.

Source: Jehiel B. Cooperman and Sarah H. Cooperman (selectors and translators).  America in Yiddish Poetry: An Anthology.  New York: Exposition Press, 1967.

Read about Israel Emiot

Thanks to Sammy Hacker for bringing this poem to my attention.