Athena’s turned Odysseus into a bum again
withering his handsome body arthritic
dimming his fine bright eyes, dulling his hair
turning his clothes to rags. I want to cry
That’s just what it’s like! I’m really
a hip fresh-person like you, slightly bored
by this slog, suffering a temporary
transformation, in each mirror expecting
my real face, stunned anew like the poor crew
to see boar bristles sprouting from the chin,
awaiting her magic wand to switch me
back. That’s exactly what it’s like, I want
to cry, but don’t. They could not care less. Like
Telemachus, they will never grow old.
Barbara Ungar’s fifth book, Save Our Ship, won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2019. It won an IBPA Ben Franklin award and was a Distinguished Favorite of the IPA. A chapbook, EDGE (named for the EDGE lists of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered species), has just arrived from Ethel Press. Prior books include Immortal Medusa, named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015; Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life; and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Prize and a silver Independent Publishers Book Award. A professor at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, she lives in Saratoga Springs. www.barbaraungar.net
