Banshee

A more elegant, refined, beautiful and simply melodious voice could not have come from an uglier face. She, herself, a nice but common type of girl, the kind of girl one is tempted into calling a gal, had the most grotesque features recently viewed on a head this far outside of Europe: her forehead was a washboard ingrained with the wrinkles of contemplating her own paradoxical appearance, and could only have been delved into such deep furrows by concluding. Her eyes were somehow equally crooked, heavy-lidded in a non-sumptuous elfin way; her nose was a futile attempt at aerodynamics that more resembled a fleshy bulb than the crowning star of the architecture of respiration; her ears were loose-slung blinders; she had no chin to speak of, but when she opened her thin-lipped, nearly straight-toothed, yet overly stock mouth and she sang, hummed, whistled, cooed, and whimpered in the throes of unrestrained passion, she was the most seductive woman in the world, and this was something only she could taste.

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philip kobylarz's

work has appeared in Paris Review, Epoch, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. His two books are rues and Now Leaving Nowheresville. Kobylarz has two books forthcoming.