Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Lana Hechtman Ayers

I Do Not Want To Be Stretched Like Music Wrung from a Dropped Seed.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers.

—inspired by Charles Wright, “Clear Night”

 

Clear night, angel moon dons its halo rising overhead.
If the lucky winds choose someone else tonight.
If God takes a paddle to his favorite child.

It’s nearly time for my body’s demise.
The page knows this truth better than anyone.
This page sun fades and time erodes to dust.

How often I wished on stars and dandelion
fluff to be other than a dark-skinned girl
full of blasphemy and poetry
indistinguishable from noise.

How often I felt strung up by
the seasons’ bright interludes.
I was the ignored apple
rotting in the grass.

I was the girl eschewing speech.
Now I am a crow arguing with sky.

 

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 […]

Sleepless Nocturne.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers.   An evergreen army surrounds our house, sky a white that belies night. Air tastes bitter green as grass, damp on the tongues of my skin. A vinegar wind ripples the moon’s all too fragile halo. Sour sax notes of hound dog’s howls jolt from a neighbor’s yard. These early late […]

On the Bench by the River.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers.   My husband embraces our little dog as she flops baby-seal-like in his lap, sun so bright on her head, the tips of her black fur iridesce to pink and purple. She’s warm as a summer-plump berry. Eyes blinking closed, open, closed. Scents only a dog can sense, her nose twitches […]

My Last Word.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers. This red room is coming to an end. See how the overhead bulb flickers? You insist on baking bread but I have no time for crumbs. Allow me to sink into violet chimes as my shadow grows deeper. Some will gossip about sonnets, others about Sonny Rollins on sax. All curiosity […]

Scattered Showers.

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First apologies, then congrats. Apologies for how late this issue is—life happens, you know? I’m still operating at the tail end of recovering from eye surgery, overlaid with a mean case of covid. That rather slowed me up. I hardly know myself slowed up. I suppose I should get to know this version. But some […]

What I Left Behind.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers. What I left behind was the night sea, sand cool as glass on my bare feet, the sweet smell of cedar trees ashore, a short stroll to the place I called home, the last room where you still loved me.  

Every Hour.

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by Lana Hechtman Ayers. Dawn began with the sight of red lights flashing on numerous trucks crowded by the beach entrance, some emergency that brought out fireman and state police, sheriff and ambulance. And now, as daylight moves toward dusk a doe, ears pitched upright, perhaps by the clacking of my old keyboard, pauses its […]