Tag: suicide

The Demise of Howie Fell by T. W. Kriner

howie
Image by T. W. Kriner, ©2025

Howie drove to Niagara Falls.
Girlfriend wouldn’t take his calls.
Learned by text he’d just been dumped.
Walked to Prospect Point and jumped.

Source: T. W. Kriner Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours:
Rhymes of a Cranky Old Conservative. J & J Publishing ©2025
Available at Amazon.com

T. W. Kriner is the author of Journeys to the Brink of Doom (1997), In the Mad Water (1999), Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours (2025), and The Call of Tawiskaro (2025).  He lives in a Western New York swamp with his wife and two cats.

Kriner says:
About three years ago I began writing what I call four-by-four poems:   four lines with four beats per line, usually with a pair of rhyming couplets.  The challenge for me was to do at least one or more of the following in each poem:  tell a story;  paint a picture;  evoke or share a memory;  express a political opinion;  convey my view on a particular subject;  do something else while trying to get a laugh.   I’ve recently posted a fair number of them at  All Poetry .com, if you’d care to sample. 

Uncertainty by Sarah Das Gupta

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Dichotomy of light and shade
rainbow blurred in cloud and rain
white suicidal water
tangible tears of spray
rocks of despair, eddies of grief
days of uncertainty and loss
 
Still the blue face of control
cascades of courage and resolution
accepting the crags of destruction
the far horizon of the past
tethered on the edge of memory

Sarah Das Gupta wrote this ekphrastic poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, which was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.
 
Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher living near Cambridge, UK who has taught in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in over 12 countries including US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Croatia and Romania

Niagara Powerhouse by Joseph Housley

 

Source: Niagara Powerhouse by Joseph Housley was first published in Nashville Review, Issue 39, December 2022.

Joseph Housley’s poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Nashville Review, The Shore, and Sixth Finch, as well as other journals and anthologies. He was selected for a residency at Hewnoaks and received an MFA in poetry from The New School. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Follow Joseph Housley on Twitter

Photo: Sun Shining Through the Mist at the Brink of the Horseshoe Falls, January 7, 2007 by Andrew Porteus

 

Niagara Falls, I Do Not by Scott Manley Hadley

hadley
Still from Hadley’s Video Niagara Falls, I Do Not


Staring at the water
Beside the top of Niagara Falls
Thinking about throwing myself in.

My sister is visiting and I am exhausted by
Pretending I don’t want to die
Which makes me want death more.

I imagine my body smashing against the rocks
Or
Being pummelled under by the water.

I see my
Fat
Bald
Sad
Body
Floating down the river
On its back
Disgusting the other
Fat
Bald
Sad
Bodies that stand looking at geography
In this trash town
As if it means redemption.  

I stop myself
By thinking
What if I become a ghost.

What if
In this horrible world
Of horrible horrors
The punishment for suicide
Is an eternity on Earth?

I step away from the edge
And tell no one
How close I was
To jumping.

Source: Scott Manley Hadley, 2003

First recorded for Moonchild Magazine, 2019

Visit the website of Scott Manley Hadley

Of Sometime True Lovers by Doug Smith

sometime
Horseshoe Falls in Winter. Photo by Heather Rodman
Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

In the yellow and blue dawn of winter
I will come for her
My misty apparition
who fogs my eyes and senses
and comforts me with her chilled
wet kiss

She knows my secret sins
She’s lived my life
“Come in,” says Niagara
“The water’s fine”
I know it’s not true, it’s freezing in December

Look up from the Horseshoe Falls
see the Rainbow Bridge, Goat Island, the gaudy signage
Home…

Look down upon the frigid rapids
My misty apparition
who fogs my eyes and senses
and I wonder how it will be
to know the caress 
of my sometime true lover
as I lapse gently inside her
and ponder my new address

Slipping into her grasp
suicide and marriage are one
no cold, no fear
just nostalgia

 

Source: The author, 2022. Of Sometime True Lovers was first published on All Poetry, 6/9/21, Written 10/31/98

Author’s note: While this appears to be about suicide in Niagara Falls, it’s really about what I owe to the city itself, the city that I grew up in and made me.

See Doug Smith ’s All Poetry site (Darknightofthesoul)

Doug Smith is a former Niagara Falls, NY resident