Ukiyo-E by Barbara Ungar

I go to bed with shutters open
watch the snow
swirling in streetlight

the sudden apparition
of a face
in my upstairs window

an Utamaro print
of a geisha combing her hair
hangs over my bed

reflected in dark glass
she seems to move
a hologram

outside in the storm
snow driving through her
streaming hair she floats

riding the wind
a lost ghost
from some Noh play

eerily beautiful
ukiyo-e
the floating world

where she once lived

where we all
briefly
appear


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


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Header Image by Kelcey Parker Ervick.

Spot illustrations for Fall/Winter 2023 issue by Dana Emiko Coons

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