Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Exangel

Billy’s Bee.

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by Barry Vitcov.

My friend Billy carried a honeybee
Around in a Diamond matchbox
We were five or six or seven
(Specific memories aren’t as important as the sense of things)
Tramping around the rocky hill behind our South San Francisco house
It seemed like Mt. Everest at the time
(Still does from time to time)
Every so often he’d slide open the matchbox
The honeybee would tentatively look out
Before flying off
Just a few feet away
Before returning
Billy would slide the box shut
Returning the box to his shirt’s breast pocket
Maybe the honeybee felt comfort from Billy’s heartbeat

When one bee died
He simply shook it out
And found another to train
I have no idea how he found obedient bees
He never named them
Billy’s family eventually moved away
I never met another bee trainer

We live in boxes
Not much of a life to share
Go from here to there

We live in boxes
built by our own creation
imagined or not

Glass Cocoon.

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by Benjamin White. -1- In the chrysalis mist, Vulnerable insects, Perplexed by the changing order, Cross the border to cling Beneath the leaves protected From the layers Of projected dangers Knowing knowledge and sin Are caught again By Mason-jar choices made To betray compliance When angry science rips Away the fig-leaf belief Of exile out […]

Backs to the Future.

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by Sean Murphy. Take a guy. Let’s say he is about my age: old enough to own a place and pay almost all his bills sometimes; young enough to understand that he is not getting any younger. Add a dose of fresh alienation—not enough to be unhealthy, of course, but enough to enable him to […]

Crab.

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[This piece was written only a short time ago, but it seems like a lifetime now that we’re all sheltering in place, and in my own case, far away from any ability to cook fresh crab. So I did a podcast about the wilting vegetables I turned into minestrone instead, which you can listen to […]

Audiobooks and a Tear in Heaven’s Wind.

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by Cal LaFountain. People miss most of what anyone has to say in a book, in a lecture, in a life. People listen better than they read. Stories encode ancient empathy. Such is the stress and emphasis of voice. The average person of the day doesn’t engage with the literature of the day because it […]

Liability.

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by Sean Murphy. I witnessed an attempted hit-and-run from my balcony the other night. I was a bit tipsy myself, which made me feel oddly implicated, an accomplice in spirits. I had not driven, which made me feel vindicated, if not wise, as though I’d learned something important during my days of drinking and not […]

From “Blogostan_01”

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by Michał Zabłocki. Translated from the Polish by Charles S. Kraszewski Who approachest in the trumpet of the whirlwind Who takest me by surprise with the earth-quake The catastrophic downpour The bicycle-accident Who cuttest me off at the knees whilst I am walking Who unrollest before my eyes difficult scripts Who makest to rebel against […]

What Goes Down Must Come Up.

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Happy New Year and welcome to 2020. Last year was not what we would call the best of all possible worlds, was it? So we’re thinking it’s time to rally our forces and change the story, because it’s the story that’s the foundation of everything. I keep thinking, myself, about a couple I knew when […]

2019.

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by David Selzer. ‘O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.’ NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN, W.B. Yeats Where the four main thoroughfares of our erstwhile Roman city meet, a many-legged dragon, in vivid gold and red, curved and reared, to gongs, drums, fire crackers on […]

Jake and the Rat.

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by Denis Bell. Jake walks into the hall and comes across a staircase that he had not noticed before. The staircase leads to a suite of lavishly furnished rooms. This old house of his is grander than he had known! One of the rooms contains a row of beds, all made up. Like a ward […]