Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Exangel

In Anger.

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by Marissa Bell Toffoli.

Blood-orange thoughts
I wished weren’t in me
escape. Lashing caprices

churn the sea around us.
My voice goes rough and salty.
Grace ceases.

Personal debris—
gathered, unspoken, unmerciful—
rises in the swells, releases

when there’s nowhere to flee.
Our every deficiency
floats on, increases

until we find ourselves.
Still here. Set it all out to sea,
no bother that the house is in pieces.

Garden Meditations.

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by Yahia Lababidi. For hours in the morning sun I knelt over our plants, like a prayer carpet Devoted to weeding our garden I sweat, squint and grunt marveling at the tenacity of living things How stubborn neglected weeds can be clinging for dear life, like bad habits… over time, almost stitched to the earth […]

Martian Canals.

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by David D. Horowitz.   Earth, at the center of the cosmos, is flat. The universe is approximately 6,000 years old. Phlogiston causes combustion. Women do not deserve the right to vote. Slavery is natural. Canals crisscross Mars. Cats and goats are demonic and evil. The emperor of Rome is a god. Earthquakes and hurricanes […]

The Crystal People.

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by Tom Ball.   I Our people here appeared as crystal see through people. And we lived on pure energy which we got from the sun. We were not humans, but rather a different race altogether. However, most of us thought we had evolved from humans. But we also thought we were superior. We lived […]

Waiting Room.

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by Jim Meirose.   Mister Moon was told to go down the hall of the emergency room and wait in the waiting room—last door to the right. Would Lon be all right? Would Lon be—all right pleaded over and again, but, but, at last—he’d been told not to worry. Just to go wait. Entering the […]

The Ship of Theseus.

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by Bruce E. R. Thompson. According to the legends of ancient Greece, the city of Athens was once in thrall to the Minoan empire, ruled by King Minos of Crete. Every nine years the Athenians were required to pay a tribute to King Minos consisting of seven maidens and seven lads who were to be […]

Saving Emily (an excerpt from “Don’t Look at Me”).

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by Charles Holdefer.   “Philip, do you know anything about Emily Dickinson’s elder brother Austin?” He shook his head. “About as much as I do of baseball.” She poured him more tea. “You see, Austin was supposed to go to the war. He was the family favorite, their golden boy. He married Emily’s childhood friend, […]

Iran’s Million Signatures Campaign.

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by Brian Griffith and Zhinia Noorian. To many Western observers, Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement may seem like something new, as if Iranian women were just now waking up to that possibility. Actually of course, their fight spans centuries, and other great movements of Iran’s recent past have received little attention in the West. Here […]

Princess (from “My Life with Dogs”).

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by Tod Davies. It was always foggy at my grandparents’ house. This was in the outer avenues of San Francisco, up a steep hill from Ocean Beach. You could hear the foghorns there. In my memory, it is almost always gray. When the rare sun did come out, there was still the sharp cold of […]

Pick Yourself Up.

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When you want to know what’s going on under the surface of the culture, just check out what its writers, poets, and artists are doing. Especially the ones flying under the radar: that’s where to look. You’ll see agitation now, and pain. David Bolton, “A Letter to Humanity.” Jim Meirose, “Last Words of a Deteriorating […]