Category: Niagara Falls Poems

Sorting Skins by Ryan Racine

coffee
Coffee Culture – corner of Queen St. & Erie Ave., Niagara Falls, 2015. Photo by Alannah Mason. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

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:
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Worldly Wounds by Ryan Racine

ryan racine
Niagara Parks Commission Butterfly Conservatory – Interior View – Statue Of Boy & Dog, 1997. Photo by Reg Deacon. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

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

Flow State by Ryan Racine

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water.”

 -Bruce Lee

racine
CN train yard with Falls view towers & the mist from the Falls in the background, 2004. Photograph by Tammy Frakking. Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

Graffitied train carts mock the lineup of
halted vehicles, forcing us to direct our attention
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡to the tower in
the distance whispering
the swelling breath of
tourism.

Thick mist plays hopscotch on
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡the front windows, shielding us as spectators
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡from the Falls’
‡‡‡‡flow.

Upon parking on the Hill,
our newspaper umbrellas
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡become wishing wells,
where cacophonous cellulous break down
to form
unfamiliar intimacies of newly amalgamated
‡‡‡‡‡‡narratives.

As we get close to the
seventh wonder,
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡secreted ink
swim into
a symbiosis that roll further down our face, where Bush is
‡‡‡‡‡seducing Bin Laden and police
brutality has
become a national sport.

Ryan Racine earned his master’s of English language and literature from Brock University. Racine 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:
•    Sorting Skins
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The Falls by Maria Cotrufo

cotrufo
Niagara Falls. Watercolour by Maria Cotrufo

The roar of thunder
a natural  wonder
water traveling freely
through crevices of rocks
flowing, flowing, flowing
in the Niagara River.

The brink is near
foamy white
dark shades of blue
sparkles the silky water
colours floating
how powerful
the hands of nature
a breathless spectacular.

cotrufo
Niagara Falls. Watercolour by Maria Cotrufo

Droplets of mist
moist in the air
surrounds this admiration
how beautiful
how rare
The Falls.

Maria Cotrufo is a resident of Niagara Falls who loves poetry writing and watercolour painting.  Cotrufo enjoys yoga and walks throughout scenic Niagara for a healthy lifestyle.  Through out the week she works full time in the health industry.

An Invitation to Niagara Falls by Irina Moga

I — Experiment

The mushrooming sound of waters, spores, and eddies oozing up towards the fog — an insolence
that defines us.
We are mired in the gurgling of the falls.
Nothing speaks of the evening
yet we appear to be in the midst of its hyphae.

moga
The Cover of Moga’s Sea Glass Circe, the collection from which this poem was taken

II — Granite

Rocks — granite and dark quartz, glitter in the riverbed.
Water randomly concludes harmonics of the second order:
grass plotting a poisoning
in the straits of the narrowing waterway.

III — Inside the Barrel and Across the Falls

Padded with gills,
the blowball of the water
speeds past us enmeshed in fuzzy tendrils.
A falsehood of colors reflects
the one-size-fits-all roar of the river,
its course shaping a
a finer, more irregular death of its meaning.

Source: The author, 2021. First published in Moga, Irina. Sea Glass Circe. Leaside Books, 2019

Author’s Bio:
Irina Moga is a Romanian-born Canadian poet, author of five poetry books, and a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC).

“Sea Glass Circe,” her fourth book, was selected for an official launch as part of the 2020 Toronto LitUp!, Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA).

A collection of poems written in French, “Variations sans palais,” was published with Éditions L’Harmattan (France) in 2020.

Irina’s work has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the US, such as: “Canadian Literature,” “carte-blanche,” “Cloud Lake Literary,” “PRISM International” online, and “Poetry Quarterly.”

Irina Moga’s website can be accessed by clicking here