THE TRIANGLE DINER
Meet me at the Triangle Diner again.
I’ll have dropped off my old Honda
with Dennis at Superior Auto and
strolled up Maple Avenue past piles
of leaves long enough to hide some bodies
and the dark brown house with signs for Matt’s Guns.
You’ll pull up in your truck, we’ll order
eggs and toast, coffee for you, tea for me,
shoot the shit, rant about politics or
poe-biz while you run me home and head
off to teach, swing by later and drop me
back to pick up my car. A regular
day. We’ll be so happy to see each other,
I won’t even care that you’re dead.
MARCH MADNESS
It’s a long time since I had no Valentine.
I would have hung on to you till maggots
fell from your nose, my favorite bit in Gilgamesh
but they whisked you off to swift cremation.
I would have put on your beloved head
the vintage American Gentleman cap,
red and black checked wool, my last gift,
the best ever, you said. Your ashes
are somewhere, but no one speaks of them.
I keep your words in an urn instead.
Blood moon, worm moon. I missed the eclipse
in Virgo, but woke in time to see the white
goddess with a bite out of her side.
It’s okay to lie on the floor and cry.
Barbara Ungar’s sixth book, After Naming the Animals, was published in the summer of 2024 by The Word Works. Other poems from this collection appeared recently in Scientific American, Crazyhorse, Psaltery and Lyre, Atticus Review, and Small Orange. A professor of English at The College of Saint Rose, she lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. www.barbaraungar.net