Niagara by Erika Meitner

White towels folded into swans
‡‡with their heads touching —
‡‡‡their hearted bodies trail

the floral bedspread: polyester,
‡‡used over and over again.
‡‡‡The bed itself casts a shadow

on the desolate paneling,
‡‡O bed. O motel. O girl
‡‡‡in white pants — you are voluminous

and shine like the yellow doors
‡‡on rows of identical love shacks
‡‡‡punctuated with all-weather

*The Voyageur*. Photograph by Alec Soth. Image used with permission. View Soth’s photography project *Niagara*

lawn-chairs out front.
‡‡Clouds ride past the pool,
‡‡‡faces of brick, the oil stains

on parking lot asphalt.
‡‡Did someone teach you
‡‡‡to park in a place like this,

between two white parallel
‡‡lines stretched like arms
‡‡‡saying, Come here? In the grass

behind the dumpster you lay
‡‡your head on his pale, shirtless
‡‡‡chest. On his skin, warm as

melted butter. It is the blue hour,
‡‡floating on quiet water, after
‡‡‡the sun sets, before it gets dark.

Love on damp pavement. Love
‡‡with sanitized glasses wrapped
‡‡‡in paper. Love in the violent mist.

*Tricia and Curtis.* Photograph by Alec Soth. Image used with permission. View Soth’s photography project *Niagara*

In the velvet night. He kisses
‡‡the soles of your feet. O girl
‡‡‡in white. Be good and take care.

I haven’t fallen like that in a very long time.

Note: This poem is based on photographer Alec Soth’s photography project of the same name. Click here to view it.

Source: Indiana Review, vol. 32, issue 1 (summer 2010)

Also published in Meitner’s Copia, BOA Editions, 2014

Visit Erika Meitner ‘s website

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Ideal Cities (HarperCollins,
2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); and
Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which won the 2018 National Jewish Book
Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her sixth
book of poems, Useful Junk, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2022. Meitner’s poems
have been anthologized widely, and have appeared in publications including Best
American Poetry, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times
Magazine, The New Republic, and Tin House. Other honors include fellowships from
MacDowell, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Blue Mountain Center. She was also the
2015 US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney
Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast. Meitner is currently a professor of English
at Virginia Tech.

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

A Dialogue by W.M. et al.

table — The title page of the *Table Rock Album*

W. M.:

We are here today and gone tomorrow.

E. B.:

Well, why don’t you stop a week at the hotel? The beds and grub are good.

C. C.:

Yes, but devilish dear.

Source: Table Rock Album and Sketches of the Falls and Scenery Adjacent. Buffalo: Steam Press of Thomas and Lathrops, copyright by Jewett, Thomas & Co.,1856c.1848

This link takes you to the scanned version of the 1855 version of Table Rock Album from the Hathi Trust

See the Table of Contents of the Table Rock Album on this site.

Untitled by Anonymous

Visitors, whene’er you wish
To feast on poultry, flesh and fish,
‡‡‡‡And right good wine,
Leave your fare across the river,
And like a hearty right good liver,
‡‡‡‡At the Pavilion dine.

Read about the Pavilion Hotel

Source: Table Rock Album and Sketches of the Falls and Scenery Adjacent. Buffalo: Steam Press of Thomas and Lathrops, copyright by Jewett, Thomas & Co.,1856c.1848

This link takes you to the scanned version of the 1855 version of Table Rock Album from the Hathi Trust

See the Table of Contents of the Table Rock Album on this site.

The Veranda by Jane Urquhart

urquhart veranda

Nineteen

hair piled high
afternoons on
the wooden verandah
of Kick’s Hotel

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡where her mother
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡dressed in black
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡moves like a cloud
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡behind the soft screen door

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡fabricating
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡tiny wreaths
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡from light brown hair

grandmother is passing the time
around like cupcakes at nineteen

rhythms of porch swings
father and brother recently dead
locks of their hair
braided in
mourner’s jewellry

summer afternoon

several young men are
tipping their hats to grandmother

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡sooner or later
grandfather will pass

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡he is the icing
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡he is the season

he will die too
of course

men always do

Source: Urquhart, Jane. False Shuffles. Victoria: Press Porcépic, 1982. Section entitled The Undertaker’s Bride.

Click to see more of Urquhart’s The Undertaker’s Bride poems

Tag: hotels

Niagara by Erika Meitner

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My Grandmother Was a Waitress in Niagara Falls by FJ Doucet

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A Dialogue by W.M. et al.

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Untitled by Anonymous

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The Veranda by Jane Urquhart

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