Barbara Ungar

Ars Poetica

I love to comb
a poem the way
girls do their dolls’
hair   singing

as I brushed
and braided mane
and tail   curried
every inch

of the pony
I owned only
in words and rode
naked through town


Cassandra

watches people stumble down the street talking
loudly to people who aren’t there.

Cassandra knows she’s
or they’re under an enchantment.

Hard to see its exact shape. The hot parts
hotter, vineyards aflame.
Cities underwater.
Archipelagos of plastic trash.
Flotillas of fire-ants.

Cassandra pulls at her eyelashes.

Fish forget to eat, mate, flee.
Even the flowers
poisoned. Bats
hang dead in their caves.

Cassandra plucks out her eyebrows,
waiting for Clytemnestra to call.

She could light herself on fire.

So many lotus-eaters.
What would it take
to wake them up?


Shooting Into The Hurricane

Some guy posted
Shoot at Hurricane Irma
stunned when tens
of thousands signed up.

A sheriff tweeted DO NOT
shoot @ Irma. You won’t make it
turn around & very dangerous
side effects. We laughed

gave you the Darwin Award
said you put the duh in Florida
for shooting at the hurricane
when the bullet boomeranged

back into your brain.
We felt better about our laughter
when we heard you were fake.

We laughed but keep following
fake-news you, our bellwether,
off the Wile E. Coyote cliff—


From Save Our Ship, Ashland Poetry Press, 2019


About the Author

Barbara Ungar was born in Worcester, grew up in Minneapolis, lived a decade in NYC and several years in Woodstock, and also spent several traveling around the world (see Thrift, 2005). She is the single mother of a single son (The Origin of the Milky Way, 2007), and a double divorcée (Charlotte Bronte, You Ruined My Life, 2011). She is practiced in the art of losing (Immortal Medusa, 2015), and obsessed with the climate crisis (Save Our Ship, 2019) and the Sixth Extinction (EDGE, 2020). A professor at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, she lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. She has read and published widely, and won some prizes and honors www.barbaraungar.net.



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