Category: Niagara Poet

Rock Paper Scissors by Keith Inman

rock
Keith Inman

Gary clipped the measuring tape
on his coveralls, bit the pencil,
and started cutting.  Sparks flew.

Someone yelled over his shoulder
about safety glasses.
He laid the grinder down, checked the cut,
pulled his glasses on,
and stood up.
“Afternoon, sir. What brings you
to our section?”

A General at ease, the VP gazed around
the plant.
“You know Gary.  My father used to say,
‘Eat your supper son.
People are starving in China.’  Now,
they have brand new factories over there,
and do twice the work for half the pay.  And what is that
you’re building?   It looks like a trailer.”

“Ah, this thing?  Nah.  It’s a…
An overhead bracing system for the ah…
lime tank we’re repairing.”
The VP nodded, “Where’s your unit leader?”
“Interpolating fuel numbers at the depot dock.”
A smile spread across his face, “Hope I don’t
see your car pulling that brace around
any time soon.”
“You definitely won’t sir.”

Simon climbed the stairs as the company car
pulled away, and racked his clipboard
on the wall of stats.  “What’d he want?”
“Nothin.”
“You didn’t tell him about my trailer, did ya?”
“Nope.  But, it’ll be ready tomorrow.”

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

Rock Paper Scissors is the Winner of the third prize of the Ontario Poetry Society contest.  Inman’s poem Figure Eights, also featuring Gary, won the first prize in the same contest.  and his poems Crewed  and Rally each was a winner of the 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. 

 

Figure Eights by Keith Inman

keith
Keith Inman

Jesse held the ladder as the heat of machinery
whirled with production.

A shower of grit fell on his head.

Overhead, Gary rustled about
on the rack of pipes near the ceiling,
one foot resting on the top rung,
the other kicked free.

“Hold the fricken thing steady.  If I fall,
I’m fallin’ on you.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.
Lost the house last strike,” his hammer
rang steel.  He took another swing and clipped
the wing of a bracket as the ladder twisted, pulling
out of Jesse’s hand; a jilted
dance partner doing a stilted, stiff-legged step
across ice
it bowed
into the cogs
of the machine.

Mangled aluminium whirled
down the gears like a thrown skater.

Alarms pealed, the machine
chewed to a stop.

Gary’s feet swung high above Jesse’s head.
“We better get our story straight.”

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

Figure Eights won the first prize of the Ontario Poetry Society contest.  His poem  Rock Paper Scissors  won the third prize, and his poems Crewed  and Rally each was a winner of the 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. 

Stephanie Vigh Nielsen’s Have You Ever Been to Niagara?

vigh
Stephanie Vigh Nielsen’s poem Have You Ever Been to Niagara? has now been published as a children’s book, with illustrations by Bronagh Morgan. It can be ordered by contacting vnproductions@cogeco.ca

Local arts newspaper reviewer John Law reviewed the book in the St. Catharines Standard on December 29, 2025.

Mi amor, mia domina, Santa Catarina by David Hobberlin

catarina
The bulk freighter “CANADA MARQUIS” approaching the flight locks of the fourth Welland Canal at Thorold, 1984
(Just leaving St. Catharines)
Painting by Anton (Tony) Akkerman.
From the personal collection of Andrew Porteus.

Mi amor, mia domina, bon Santa Catarina:
I dreamt that you were skating
along the canal, gliding by
the cargo ships making way,
with dark hulls riding high,
ignoring the value of your presence,
as I have done these past many years.
I called out your name
but my words were naked,
lost and scattered to a cold wind,
as if now an empty voice, wishful,
in the stillness of your garden.

Mi amor, mia domina, joyeuse Santa Catarina:
I thought I saw you dancing
among a field of ripe berries,
the vines heavy with the yield,
unaware of your playful laughter,
as once I was when we were children.
A time when the world was distant
before I left behind the safe haven
of our friendship to the allure of a lion
bridge. But my life grew naked,
lost and scattered in a cold wind,
far from the stillness of your garden.

Mi amor, mia domina, chanteuse Santa Catarina:
I hoped to hear you singing again of the freedom,
we used to find on Geneva Street,
when everything was untouched by ego.
Where they championed civil rights
more profoundly than we did riches.
When long hair, loving, blossoms, hootenannies,
explained the culture of a generation,
a golden innocence easily naked,
lost and scattered by a cold wind,
far from the stillness of your garden.
Yet, mi amor, mia domina, bella Santa Catarina,
you have never changed.

Source: The author, 2025

I am a Canadian poet currently living in Chippawa. Over the years my poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and periodicals beginning with the anthology ‘Canadian Poets of 1969’.
 
The poem ‘On the Waterfront of Toronto’ earned the Monica Ladell Award 2012 for best poem presented by the Scarborough Arts Society.
 
I have participated in various poetry readings and venues held in Toronto, Scarborough, Welland, St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Niagara Falls.
 
Grey Borders Books published three chapbooks of my poetry – Inanna  (A Tale of Sumer),  Reflections on the Republic, and Going to Work on a Snowy Morning. Click to visit the David Hobberlin page on the Grey Borders Books website

The Indian Heritage Council of Morristown, Tennessee, published a limited edition chapbook ‘The Pipe Maker and Other Poems’ in the millennial year 2000.

At Niagara (1923 version) by R. Nathaniel Dett

nathaniel
R. Nathaniel Dett
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

—No, no ! Not tonight, my Friend,
I may not, cannot go with you tonight.
And think not that I love you any less
Because this now I’d rather be alone.
My heart is strangely torn ; unwonted thoughts
Have so infused themselves into my mind
That altogether there is wrought in me
A sort of hapless mood, whose phantom power
Born perhaps of my own fantasies
Has ta’en me. By its subtle spell
I’m wooed and changed from what’s my natural self.
I am so possessed I can but wish
For nothing else save this and solitude.
If in companionship I sought relief
Yours indeed would be the first I’d seek.
There is none other whom I so esteem,
None who quite so perfect understands.
Your presence always is a soothing balm,
—Ne’er failing me when troubled. But tonight,
Forgive me, Friend—I’d rather be alone.
Leave me, let me with myself commune.
Presently if no change come, I shall go
Stand in the shadowed gorge, or where the moon
Throws her silver on the rippling stream,
List to the sounding cataract’s thundering fall,
Or hark to spirit voices in the wind.
For methinks sometimes that these strange moods
Are heaven-sent us by the jealous God
Who’d thus remind us that no human love
Can fully satisfy the longing heart :
Perhaps an intimation sent to souls
That he would speak somewhat, or nearer draw.
Therefore I’ll to Him. Talking waters, stars,
The moon and whispering trees shall make me wise
In what it is He’d have my spirit know.
And Nature singing from the earth and sky
Shall fill me with such peace, that in the morn
I’ll be the gay glad self you’ve always known.
Urge me no further, now you understand.
A nobler friend than you none ever knew—
But not this time. Tonight I’ll be alone ;
And if from moonlit valley God should speak,
Or in the tumbling waters sound a call,
Or whisper in the sighing of the wind,
He’ll find me with an undivided heart
Patient waiting to hear ; but Friend,—alone.

Source:  Kerlin, Robert T. Negro Poets and Their Poems.  Washington: Associated Publishers, 1923

About R. Nathaniel Dett

An abbreviated version of this poem (starting with the line “List to the sounding cataract’s thundering fall,”) was published in R. Nathaniel Dett. The Album of a Heart, 1911.  View the 1911 version

The longer version of the poem was also published in Beatrice F. Wormley and Charles W.  Carter An Anthology of Negro Poetry by Negroes and Others, 1937.

In the 1937 version:

  • “now” on line 4 has been changed to “night”
  • ” changed” on line 11 has been changed to “charged”
  • the last lines
    “Or in the tumbling waters sound a call,
    Or whisper in the sighing of the wind,
    He’ll find me with an undivided heart
    Patient waiting to hear ; but Friend,—alone.”

    has been changed to:

    “Or in the tumbling waters of the wind.
    He’ll find me with an undivided heart
    Patient waiting to hear ; but Friend,—alone”