Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

EAP: The Magazine Archive

Mrs. Johnson.

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by Bruce E. R. Thompson.

I saw a Texas buzzard once—a squalid bird;
wings dipped in entrails; its gaze alert for thievings;
salvaging what it could of the desert’s leavings;
picking through the discarded and the disinterred;
wearing winter plumage out of season. Absurd
to watch it stagger, legs to short and neck too long;
a disheveled, wretched bag-lady of a bird.

But then it leaped and rose, as gracefully as song,
above the sand and thistle in a thermal plume,
until it turned away, wafting through the Texas air.

Now I see Mrs. Alice Johnson sitting there,
her bags beside her in this public reading room.
In her mind, as she reads poems of Old Madrid,
I ‘spect she soars as sweetly as that buzzard did.

Owls, Man.

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by Guinotte Wise. When the dogs were little pups falling around I made them a pen, and the owls came to look so I crisscrossed fishing line over the top of the pen to keep them from swooping in. Now the dogs are grown, they barked and barked until I finally went out to break […]

Portraits of Angels in the Sky.

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by Barry Vitcov. Portraits of angels in the sky Portraits imagined on a day Disguised as clouds floating high   Painting pictures of times gone by Painting images in blues and grays Portraits of angels in the sky   Whimsical shapes morphing nigh Dancing in shadowy arrays Disguised as clouds floating high   Sketching ideas […]

A Small Man is Easy to Keep.

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by Lanny DeVuono. I used to say I was done with relationships, just done. But after Tom, I don’t say that anymore. I just know I’m done. A swan song, I guess. Family narratives would have me unlucky in romance, but family narratives, like any history, serve those on top. It’s true, however, that when […]

The Carousel.

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by Marissa Bell Toffoli. Gallops circles through time. Tinny music forever the same. Blow a kiss, send them off. When they look back, will they see me waving? Bobbing on winged horses frozen in flight. In sight, out of sight, in, out. Once more around. Down, up. A beginning for every end— we’re chasing our […]

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 […]

Multitude.

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by Chris Farago. I thought an incandescent poultice was the solution for exhaustion; I thought the ladies of the manor would heal this aching toe; I thought the levers pulled in the proper order would reveal Heaven— I thought— I thought—

Parvin Paidar and Post-patriarchal Islam.

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by Brian Griffith. In most countries or cultures around the world, women show more interest in religion than men. Women are more likely to follow a spiritual path, pray every day, or visit churches, mosques, and shrines. We may assume they are blindly following the directions of male religious leaders, but more likely they have […]

San Miguel Cemetery, Málaga, Spain.

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by Jeff Schiff. Tucked now between a dog park and bazars the province of Chinese expats in a grove of peppery Seville orange the predictable Andalusian suspects Garcia Fernandez Velázquez Giménez Animas Saenz scores of Velascos Riveras and Alvaros a gauntlet of now rounded marble mausoleums and flaked iron work and many beneath my feet […]

Rivers, Lakes, and Seas.

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by David D. Horowitz. “The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen…” I bite into my snack, a honeycrisp apple fresh from a local QFC market, as I begin to absorb the information in the Wikipedia entry for “Titan,” Saturn’s biggest moon and the only moon anywhere known to have a dense atmosphere. How could I […]