The Literary Review
selfsame
No longer knows. Foreigners are more apt to tell of the intricacies of being in a familiar land,
now strange, abroad.
Habits grow on the old like warts, soon to bloom fine stems of hair. In lives, we change into
different people.
- Philip Kobylarz
bearings, gained
Over some kind of threshold we appoint to clocks, our lies become truth. Dreams, pursued, lived, dreamt
re-lived, told, and
given. Sometimes nutshells don’t open. What do cats return for? On the plains between the hills and
the sea, poppies bloom
for nothing else better to do. Every door slam contains some anger. A ship of fools contains much food,
water, no sexton.
- Philip Kobylarz
The sea as if it were more than a bubble. In photos of ghosts, the spirit lies in what can be seen:
wooden stairway
of the old church, or mansion, the something only half there reveals what’s not intended to be.
Seedlings in the breeze,
useless toy of a sleeping cat in the gutter, flowers glowing towards their end at the base of a tomb.
Voyage without
return is the small print never read at the footer of the itinerary. Left with boxes locked with
shadows, meals are made
of shade.
- Philip Kobylarz
iodine-esque
Ingredients. Jet streams. The wherewithal. Ineptitudes of a sudden nature. Shades of shade. Not
to be. Perpetual
eclipses. Pink angora hat. Verbiage left on the scrabble board. A wound opened, bled,
wiped with vinegar.
Chrysanthemums of the sea. The shock of after. In the magpie’s nest, cigar bands. And the moss,
resisting; red.
- Philip Kobylarz
trespassing
At the gate, bottles with cut lips. Crypts of grass cuttings. Moth wings. Stationary
weather front. Still
a front. At the gate, a trail worn thick. Strands of birch. Playing cards wet
and mangled in
alleys, no jokers. At the gate, a gate. Handles, pulled. Insouciant. Towards
a line of people bent
on waiting. At the gate, a passage to. Through the gate: a changeling of fences.
- Philip Kobylarz
obscuriting
As of yet, untitled. The naming of the wind. One such none such. Orange and white
compliment of a dreamsicle.
The parade: one after another sponge. What doesn’t fit into cardboard boxes we call
furniture. Postage not
canceled. Windings of a clock. Garden fenced by tiny boulders, otherwise known as rocks.
Burden of empty milk
bottles. Stasis of the guard. The worst of times, around when o’clock. Tree obscuring
the light of clouds.
- Philip Kobylarz