Ode to a School by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

There’s an old school in Niagara
It’s located on Lundy’s Lane
With front and back roof dormers
And windows of diamond pane

Ornate with decorative detail
In classical Edwardian times
Clean lines with a portico entrance
And oh how that old bell could chime

Just a short walk to Green’s Corners
I was only six at the time
And my heart would fill with excitement
As I joined my friends in the line

My teacher was tall and stern
Her hair tied up in a bun
But all the students loved her
Because she made learning so much fun.

Alphabet cards on the chalk board
Magic letters that turned into words
Oh the joy I felt when I realized
I had entered a whole new world

Fun with Dick and Jane readers,
Weekly spelling games
Reciting multiplication tables
In my school on Lundy’s Lane.

The old school is looking sad now
Wooden planks are covering those panes
Chipped paint and looking very unkempt
That sweet school on Lundy’s Lane.

Remember the importance of preservation
As our dear Ruth Redmond said
She valued the importance of history
It will last long after we’re dead.

Cherish our history forever
Like Europeans have done throughout time
Please can we all join together
And save this old school of mine.

Source: The author, 2021

Visit Stephanie Vigh Nielsen’s Niagara Proud website

Visit the City of Niagara Falls’ Heritage Property Listing for the Lundy’s Lane School

Robert Frost by atlantic

The neighbourhood where I live
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡is surrounded
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡by
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Trees.

So everywhere you look
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡There is a thin green canopy

A living, breathing enclosure
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡away from the bustle of
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡the city
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡and nearby highways.

I don’t know
‡‡‡‡‡‡about fences
‡‡‡but trees?

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Trees make good neighbours.

Source: The author, 2019

atlantic was born and raised in Niagara Falls, where he still resides. A selection of his work is available on Instagram

Also by atlantic:
• Baby Steps IV
• burgoyne bridge
• carnival tunes
• water child

Sorting Skins by Ryan Racine

Sunday afternoons consisted of pressing
five year old flesh
against puzzle pieces, constructing a
cardboard genome. Stuck in monosyllabic monotony
to keep childhood ignorance distilled
from ambiguity.

On Tuesdays, teen intimacies grew in the form
of Queen Street coffee shops, hoisting shy
ankles curled during untimely dates.
Couples waited for conversations to climax,
leaving sweat on lips to
taste like warm milk.

Forget embarrassment and
after parties where cold hands sunk into
heads, pulling hair back behind the ears so
stuttering saliva could cascade
freely into Chippawa porta-potties.
The guiltless eloquence of touch leaves a sensual
lore sliding with voluptuous syncopation.

Ryan Racine earned his master’s of English language and literature from Brock University. He is currently working as a high school teacher and college instructor in Ontario. His poetry can be found in The Steel Chisel, Pauses/Words/Noises, The Brock University Anthology, Pictures & Portraits, Ekphrastic, Joypuke, Weekly Poems, and PACE Magazine.

See other poems by Ryan Racine on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:
• Flow State
• Worldly Wounds

Worldly Wounds by Ryan Racine

My dog is a narrative archivist,
unearthing the forgotten and
polluted histories that are
scattered across Niagara Falls’ ecosystem.

Like the bacterial intrusions that make
their way into his body and
cause biological mutations, the
city’s traumas enter and impregnate my mind.

Realizing that i do not have the ability to
recreate a preinfectious state,
i instead reflect on what it means to be
in a postinfection state where i see myself

as part of the problem.
All i have is my dog’s nose,
the bringer of light
that grants recognition to the unsaid.

Ryan Racine earned his master’s of English language and literature from Brock University. He is currently working as a high school teacher and college instructor in Ontario. His poetry can be found in The Steel Chisel, Pauses/Words/Noises, The Brock University Anthology, Pictures & Portraits, Ekphrastic, Joypuke, Weekly Poems, and PACE Magazine.

See other poems by Ryan Racine on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:
• Flow State
• Sorting Skins

My Grandmother Was a Waitress in Niagara Falls by FJ Doucet

My grandmother at forty woke up before dawn
to dress, put on make-up, and curl her hair.
She was divorced, a mother of five, and a waitress
at the Best Western hotel in Niagara Falls.

The job started at eight o’clock but, always,
she left her apartment on Main Street early. Turned
the key in the lock. The click in the lock
told her she had the freedom to claim the open,

silent walk. She was a waitress at the Best
Western hotel in Niagara Falls. The boss was waiting
at the job, but the shift started at eight o’clock,
and just after dawn my grandmother still found worlds

of time. Worlds enough to breathe the air and know
she was alive. In 1980, in Niagara Falls,
the air smelled of water and smoke and big car
engines. Morning leavings of tourist bacchanals

performed all night before. But she didn’t care
for any of that. She was a waitress at the Best
Western hotel, and when she walked down
the Fallsview Boulevard hill she knew—she was alive.

These days my grandmother’s legs are frail
as the stilts of dying birds, but four decades back
they were still strong enough to work all day—
work and wake again before the dawn, wake

to descend the last stretch of hill. Watch
the rising sun turn Niagara’s jagged trench
and torrent liquid gold. Now at eighty years,
my grandmother trains my gaze with misty eyes

and lifts a brittle claw. When I was forty,
she confides, I was a waitress at the Best Western
hotel. Every morning before work, I’d walk down
to Niagara Falls. Watched the water. Knew

I was alive. A smile snakes across her skull. You know,
I thought I was so old. My God, she whispers,
I’d give anything now to be forty. Walk
down the hill to the water. Alive.

Source: FJ Doucet, 2021

FJ Doucet’s work has been published in grey borders magazine, The Banister, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Red Bird Chapbook website, Ascent Aspirations, and The Lyric. She is the newest president of the Brooklin Poetry Society. Doucet was born and mostly raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and though she has since lived on three continents, Niagara continues to haunt her.

Click here to visit the website of FJ Doucet

Category: City of Niagara Falls

Ode to a School by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

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