The Falling: Three Who Have Intentionally Plunged Over Niagara Falls With the Hope of Surviving
- The Falling: Three Who Have Intentionally Plunged Over Niagara Falls With the Hope of Surviving
1. Annie Edson Taylor (1901)
Don’t hate me because I sent the cat first. Darling, desperate times require— well, they require. I told the little girl who owned the cat I’d buy her a new one. Days of waiting for a coin of mention in the newspaper. Days of waiting for wind— for a sign, a purple swallow circling the falls in a figure eight. Draw me a line of three corks and three holes so I can breathe in the barrel. I thought I’d have all the floppy feathered hats a gal could hope for.
No one seems to realize I am a star, the original Queen of the Mist. Tell me: What does a soul look like after you dash a plump cat to smithereens? All I have are beat-down tap shoes (someone even stole my barrel!), a feather, a snip of string.
But look at the elegant line of the arch of my foot, my boot, how each hoop in my skirt sings when I walk. Isn’t that a picture? Surely that’s worth a picture. [End Page 68]
2. Charles G. Stevens, the Demon Barber of Bedminster (1920)
The right arm: only thing happy to be found. It even waved a little.
3. Steve Trotter (1985 Steve Trotter (1995)
At age twenty-two, the youngest person to go over the falls successfully, and twice
In Tallahassee, you learn real sweet. Sweet drinks to wait for you long after there are boulders— water. And somehow, You’ve got a charmed life, and star-spangled shorts But even you know how much you are able to snap shut when the trigger hairs are tapped exactly twice. Look Two is good, to make the drinks equals sweet skirts the bar closes. At the base, smoothed by years of drumming you missed every single one. a deer-bone amulet, to cheer you on both trips. your boundaries. There’s a limit to ridicule her. Venus flytraps are touched not once, but at your life: It can count. just enough, for you. [End Page 69]
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of three books of poetry. Her newest poetry collection is forthcoming from Copper Canyon and her nature-essay collection is forthcoming from Milkweed. She is poetry editor of Orion and is the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
