Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Exangel

Not to Style the Bouquets.

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by Benjamin White.

 

There is a Zen moment too often lost
In the exhaust at the end of the day
When the body’s dismay must pay the cost
Of being tossed into the tattered fray
Where the way we treat ourselves is mindless
Without the kindness of being aware
And the nothing-there forms a dark blindness
Left timeless in the deepening despair,
But everywhere – by any other name –
Has the same capacity to flower
In the hour to be free and untamed
So the Self can claim a certain power
To devour the stillness, the calm, the mild
By styling the wild and not the bouquet

A Dangerous Scent.

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by Barry Vitcov. Sitting on a creek-side boulder just after daybreak. Light filtering through dewy air like sprinkles on a donut. It’s cool, crisp, and green as he watches for a pair of river otters seen the day before when the fog would not retreat. He is being still, shoulders relaxed, a non-aggressive posture allowing […]

South Loudon St., Sunday Afternoon.

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by Sean Murphy. Sights unseeable, or striving to be unseen, Sunday being the day of rest. Humans hidden or missing in inaction, dispersed like a bombed-out anthill, sucking on poison fumes and marinating in distress—followed by unconcern. A steady scent of sun-baked urine spiced up, at times, by freshly sparked spliffs, gang-greened grass drowning in […]

Begin again.

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by Diana Morley. Take one. A party— a couple talking cornerwise shading their eyes from the lowering sun, she in a peach sheath he in creased khakis melted sunlight on her dry baguette slice showing the party’s over. Take two. Begin again. Shaman drum slow rising over the mundane while earth’s molten core pulls our […]

A Hole in the Night.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers. after “Venetian Siesta” by Joseph Millar   I’ve never had a talent for sleep but when I do, it’s all dreams of lost rooms, rainstorms of rotten teeth water-falling from my mouth, still, I glissade through days wearing calm façades while inside my mind conducts a swing-shift sardine cannery, and in […]

Superbloom.

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by Marissa Bell Toffoli.   Bright poppies wave hello in a lucky breeze. Parched, we smile for the sun, move between what shade we can find or make for each other, your shadow inside mine. Feel your tired sighs, pause to catch our breath. My thirsty eyes want it all, the sweet saturation, as if […]

Her Name Rhymed with Pamela.

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by Tamra Lucid. One of the most charming of our many bass players introduced her to me. She was way too cool for him, although he was cool, too, in a quirky way. He understood his lower rank, and she liked that about him. His adoration tickled her sense of irony. She said to me […]

Sadness, Newness, and a Call for Submissions to a New Press.

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Let’s face it. It’s been a rough winter, both for the country and the world. Here in the Pacific Northwest, it’s as if Mother Nature is having a particularly stern tease with us, setting up each day as if it’s spring rather than an appropriately snowy winter. Wind and sun and rain, and more wind […]

Garlic Hacks.

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Our usual Christmas dinner is my holiday paella, the dear husband’s favorite festive dish. One of his particularly warmly received elements has always been the homemade aioli sauce I whip up on the side. As doubtless you know, this is a mayonnaise made with olive oil, and combined with garlic. Lots and lots of garlic. […]

Inuit (from “My Life with Dogs”).

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by Tod Davies. It was a real community, the place I had chosen. I found that out, bit by bit, day by day. Happy helped. He was indeed a happy dog, gregarious to a fault. In those days, more than three decades ago, my little alpine valley was a sparsely populated place. It was a […]