Category: City of Niagara Falls

Convenient Corner by Cole McInerney

convenient
Circle K on Thorold Stone Road, Niagara Falls, Ontario Image by Circle K

 

 

The consistent
consumer light
from the Circle K
that summer.

A mirage among
the sleeping suburb.

Zombie-like
worker.

Refrigerator
hummer.

The back wall
title text
cheap soda
happiness guarantee,
like broadcasting
palm trees
on a green screen.

Back out to
the parking lot
below the
practically perfect
Circle Moon

Source: The author, 2023

Convenient Corner was first published in Echolocation, vol. 20, March 2023. Convenient Corner was inspired by the Circle K  on Thorold Stone Road, Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He studied English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, he is a MFA student at the University of South Carolina, studying poetry. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Feral Poetry, White Wall Review, The Bookends Review, and Echolocation Magazine.

Follow Cole McInerney on Instagram

Follow Cole McInerney on Linktr.ee

See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:

•     The Buildings of the Dream
•     Convenient Corner
•     Lake Erie
•     Russell Street

A Country Sleigh Ride by Melvin Byron Misener (A Fragment)

sleigh
George Ellis, Wife and Girl at Dufferin Islands, Niagara Falls, 1890
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Last Thursday night with the weather mild,
A party proposed a sleigh-ride wild,
So they all piled into a two-horse sleigh
And sped to the country miles away.

To say where they went I think’s no harm,
For they landed at the Robertson farm ;
We think their number was forty-five.
Were they noisy ? Well, they were much alive.

Now they took Dr. Wallis, he’s quite a nob,
And always on hand for a tying job.
He went just to help the youngsters through—
A helper good where there’s work to do.

The telephone’s handy, bet your life,
So Wallis telephones to his wife :
“We got here safe, twenty minutes to stay,
And then we take our homeward way.”

It was not so, for the whole bunch
Say we don’t leave till we have our lunch.
So coffee, cake and a sandwich too,
Were passed around among the few.

On Fluvius now you can’t depend,
When you want it dry, the rain he’ll send ;
So, to make them mind their homeward trip,
The rain came down with a drip, drip, drip.

[page is cut off at this point]

Source: Probably from The Welland Tribune. Found in the Misener folder of the Mayholme Foundation

Melvin Byron Misener of Crowland (May 18, 1847 – May 28, 1936), was known by many readers of the Welland Tribune as “the Crowland Poet”. His personal writings span the period from 1869 to 1935. Among the daily accounts of social events, weather conditions and farm chores in his diaries there are numerous obituaries for friends, family and others living in Welland County, particularly Crowland, Thorold and Port Robinson.

Read more about Misener

Of Sometime True Lovers by Doug Smith

sometime
Horseshoe Falls in Winter. Photo by Heather Rodman
Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

In the yellow and blue dawn of winter
I will come for her
My misty apparition
who fogs my eyes and senses
and comforts me with her chilled
wet kiss

She knows my secret sins
She’s lived my life
“Come in,” says Niagara
“The water’s fine”
I know it’s not true, it’s freezing in December

Look up from the Horseshoe Falls
see the Rainbow Bridge, Goat Island, the gaudy signage
Home…

Look down upon the frigid rapids
My misty apparition
who fogs my eyes and senses
and I wonder how it will be
to know the caress 
of my sometime true lover
as I lapse gently inside her
and ponder my new address

Slipping into her grasp
suicide and marriage are one
no cold, no fear
just nostalgia

 

Source: The author, 2022. Of Sometime True Lovers was first published on All Poetry, 6/9/21, Written 10/31/98

Author’s note: While this appears to be about suicide in Niagara Falls, it’s really about what I owe to the city itself, the city that I grew up in and made me.

See Doug Smith ’s All Poetry site (Darknightofthesoul)

Doug Smith is a former Niagara Falls, NY resident

 

Another December Snow Day in Niagara Falls by Doug Smith

december
Children on Bridge St., Niagara Falls, looking East, circa 1900
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Lost in snowflakes

      children march 
            in jubilation
                warmed 
                      by ‘Let it Snow’ 
                          philosophies
                             and homemade 
                                 scarves and mittens.
                                     Another December snow day 

                                                    in Niagara Falls.  

Source: The Author, August 2022

 

See Doug Smith ’s All Poetry site (Darknightofthesoul)

See Another December Day in Niagara Falls on All Poetry, written 12/13/21

Doug Smith is a former Niagara Falls, NY resident

Thy Bells Deveaux (a song) by Thomas Vincent Welch and J. Ernest Rieger

welch

Their tender tone o’er field and wood,
On summer wind now borne along;
With beating heart and eyes bedewed,
I hear once more their ev’ning song.

In many lands my feet have strayed,
Since I obeyed their vesper call;
When night winds stirred, in dreams I heard,
Their plaintive notes at evening’s fall.

Ring, ring, ring thy bells Deveaux
Ring o’er the cliffs thy bells Deveaux
Ring o’er field and wood as long ago;
Niag’ra’s murm’ring flood below
Ring o’er the cliffs thy bells Deveaux,
thy bells, thy bells, Deveaux

Once more a boy in forest dim,
I hear with joy their twilight hymn;
The toils of life, the joys we weep,
Our cares and sorrows ring to sleep.

O God from whom all blessings flow,
Protect thine hallow’d walls Deveaux,
And bells of heav’n, when life is past,
Call all thy children home at last.

Ring, ring, ring thy bells Deveaux
Ring o’er the cliffs thy bells Deveaux
Ring o’er field and wood as long ago;
Niag’ra’s murm’ring flood below
Ring o’er the cliffs thy bells Deveaux,
thy bells, thy bells, Deveaux

Source: Welch, Thomas Vincent (words) and Rieger, J. Ernest (music). Thy Bells Deveaux: Song for Soprano or Tenor and Mixed Quintette or Chorus. Niagara Falls, NY: J.E. Rieger, 1894

Many thanks to Lewis Buttery for bringing this song by Welch and Rieger to the NFPP curator’s attention.

The site of DeVeaux College is now owned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and is now the DeVeaux Woods State Park.

See the poem Chimes of De Veaux by Ada Elizabeth Fuller, to commemorate the installation of the new bells in 1913

Read more about the DeVeaux College Chimes

Visit the Big Daddy Dave blog post about DeVeaux School