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

Untitled Limerick by Robert Stek

I marvel at the falls in Niagara,
More astounding than the treasure of Agra.
But could the falls be suspended,
Or even up-ended,
With a massive dose of Viagra?

Robert Stek was the second place winner in the Bootmakers of Toronto second limericks contest , 2017

Stek is from Magnolia, Delaware

Russell Street by Cole McInerney

And the street held silence for two strangers who didn’t have to stay that way.
We stood silent below lamplight in the magnetic time.

Your suburban home stood parched in the dark and didn’t know me well.
Your mother stood at the northern window and pretended to be passing by.
The ten o’clock fireworks stood above the hotels and were heard in a tired sky.
Your roof stood parallel to that forgiving horizon.

Your car stood locking and unlocking as we collided.
We stood silent across from fire station number three then went around your block again.
And in that silence we don’t celebrate the ending we just end up walking other ways.

Source: The author, 2021

Russell Street was first published in The Continuist, May 10, 2020

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.

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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

Sonnet on Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

Waters of wonder! whose dread cry, profound,
‡‡Is as the world’s voice lifted to the sky!
‡‡A wild, and terrible, and awful cry,
Fall! pealing with a more than sea-deep sound,
Thrills not the earth to thee for leagues around?—
‡‡Art thou not heard into the Eternity?—
‡‡Beyond that upper air that seems to lie
Listening above thee in bright silence bound?
‡‡On plumes of swift imagination borne,
How have I seen thee, mighty cataract! sent
‡‡As ’twere from Heaven to Earth, of strength unshorn!
How have I o’er thy scene o’erpowering bent,
‡‡Adored thy wrathful play and savage scorn,
‡‡Thou won’drous Chaos of one Element!

Source: Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. Queen Berengaria’s Courtesy and Other Poems. London: J. Rickerby–J. Hatchard and Son, 1838

Click here to read a biography of Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

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

Tag: Niagara Falls

An Invitation to Niagara Falls by Irina Moga

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Untitled Limerick by Robert Stek

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Russell Street by Cole McInerney

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Sonnet on Niagara by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley

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My Grandmother Was a Waitress in Niagara Falls by FJ Doucet

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