Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

poem

A Death in Alexandria.

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by Gail White.

Why did we kill Hypatia?

 

Was philosophy that big a threat

to the Christian faith?

We managed to combine it with Plato,

why not with Plotinus as well?

 

Was it because she had beauty

as well as intellect?

Was that reason enough

to scrape the flesh from her bones?

 

Maybe it was because if asceticism

doesn’t make you fall in love with God,

it can make you in love with yourself.

Maybe because we were blind

before we put out those eyes

that now I will always see.

 

My Forked Tongue.

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by Clarissa Jakobsons.   Playful butterflies check milkweed plants then fly away like shooting stars turning Venus and Saturn upside down. Rainwater cleanses my hair. I rub cooked oatmeal into maple roots releasing crimson acrylics onto canvas. A disguised red hen answers the dead landline, stealing axe trimmed eggs with an axe. Neighbor foxes ravage […]

Swan Lake.

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by Bettina Sapien. I was insulted when you said I had a voice like an oboe. Then I remembered the oboe solo in the first act of Swan Lake. How it rises from the pit and serpentines up the aisle. Locates my seat and slides underneath. The summer voice of a friend calling up from […]

Long Division.

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by Marissa Bell Toffoli.   Laughter like wind chimes, how the sound carries. You can hear the party going on past the fence– were we there? When it was our turn, did we carry on so? Summon that feeling of weightlessness, invincibility. Overshadowed now by the wings of time. Consider the calendar by weeks and […]

Wimme Saari, a Finn.

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by Diana Morley. sings indigenous music in no hurry— he begins with silence then opens the door where small cold birds sing along, woke by sound carrying over lakes and land iced over for months a random cracked twig as the bass clarinet feels its way as companion to voice all echoes over land so […]

Summer 1980.

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by Sean Murphy. Who am I to speak of the dead or even dare to presume it’s my place to do so? Because I was there, aware —even at ten—this was something nobody would ever forget. An era when news was on the news, and word of mouth, always the best way to convey everything […]

Condemned to Relive.

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by Benjamin White. The nation is built on false narratives Orchestrated by the unquestioned facts Operating on the poor reflections Manipulated by historical Understandings of the benevolence Created by the projected image Hollowing out the scene of honesty Fabricating the nostalgic comfort Of time and place that never existed – Remembered in the longing for […]

Power Gratifies Itself.

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by Benjamin White. It appears History is irrelevant When memory stretches All the way back To a few minutes ago, Forgetting and overlooking The cause and effect Of important events And situations As reactions And responses Operate in a void Where power Gratifies itself

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 […]