Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Exangel

129x.

by

by Chris Farago.

I read of dreams and circularities,
And I can’t help but feel in this daze
That we’re dancing in mirrors, dancing in shadows,
Dancing in light.  I touch your hand,
And it’s my own.  One of us laughs.

Romance and mystery are entwined;
Horror stays away, in deference to the past.
I run through the list:  beg, entreat, plead.
Let the stars give us light a moment longer;
Let my lips linger on your forehead a moment still;
Let us dance through infinity, dance in the maze,
Dance till our legs give way, till the floor falls away,
Till we find ourselves in the wine-addled sea,
Clinging to each other like green leaves
Shaken free by the storm.

I could harp on the cycles of time,
Say that I have seen your face
In the face of all others
And will continue to do so,
But false lineage bears no truth;
Those faces merely reflect each other;
Yours is the singularity
From which nothing else can be derived.

So, let us dance, for a year or a thousand,
Or none at all:  the waltz plays on,
I dance, you dance, we dance.
I touch my hand, and it is yours.

Despite the Lukewarm Coffee and Drizzly Nights.

by

by David D. Horowitz.   “Gee, thanks, Famous Writer X, for telling me and your other workshop students they have no chance to succeed. ‘What glamour,’ you purred sarcastically. ‘Ten million MFA in Creative Writing students want what you want. You have virtually no chance.’ Easy for you to say, Mister Famous! I’m out $145 […]

Beg Pardon, Beg Pardon! Sorry to offend!

by

by Jim Meirose. Seems in this glimmer-light ‘p’fore-dawn there’s something to mull now. There’s a door out there, past. Past what’s ‘n the way ‘f-seeing it. There’s no light ‘nd there’s nothing but nothing’s in the way so—dark must be something, after all. When you think about. Or I do. Funny—but anyplace right here but […]

200,000B.C.: The Storyteller.

by

by Tom Ball. CHAPTER 1: THE TRIBE’S MYTHOLOGY Let me tell you the tale of my people. We lived in what you know as the French Riviera in winter and in the Alps in summer. In this year our tribe had 52 warriors and 102 women and almost 300 children. That was in my 40th […]

Airplanes and tin roofs.

by

by Kunal Mehra. He recoiled at the sight of the ox walking towards his stall. Its horns were big and there wasn’t much space to move back – on his right side, was an old woman selling buckets of tomatoes and marigold flowers strung together; on the left, a teenager selling tea and fried cutlets; […]

Types of Hairstyles I Would Have if I Wasn’t Bald.

by

by Sean Murphy. I mean if we’re talking miracles: Having hair would, admittedly, be low on the priority list, at least with things like healthy hearts, minds, and livers to consider. For starters. Bank accounts too. And also, I remember that even when I could be called hirsute, once upon a time, every day was […]

Lake Urmia.

by

by David Selzer. In Old Persian, language of the Shah of Shahs, Darius the Great, whose inscriptions extend from Persepolis to Egypt, and from Romania to Bahrain, this salt lake, greater than the Dead Sea, was called Chichast, ‘Glittering’ – sunlight on the undulating lapidary of myriads of silver particulates. Urmia – Assyrian Aramaic for […]

Circle Back.

by

It’s another year, and a new chance to refresh our origins—rather than the present cultural activity of driving them into the ground. When does real life begin? As the old joke goes, when you ask a priest, a minister and a rabbi, the first says, “At conception.” The second, “At birth.” The rabbi, though, in […]

Puff Pastry is Your Friend.

by

“Okay,” my friend said. “I’m going to watch everything you do when you make that goat cheese tart. I need to learn how to cook puff pastry.” “Oh,” I said. “It’s very complex. You’ll have to take notes.” I was kidding, of course. She followed me to the kitchen. I opened the freezer. I took […]

Full-Length Collection.

by

by David D. Horowitz   “But I worked for two weeks on this poem,” I whined, “and it still doesn’t read well.” “Ah, well,” responded Professor Dunlop in his English accent. “Blood, sweat, toil, and tears.” “But two weeks! And there’s the risk of it being a failure.” Sitting behind his paper-crowded desk in his […]