Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

poem

Pull back the curtains and open the door.

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by Cliff Beck.

Weary of winter mornings filled with the dark confusion
that underscored the night before
we long to see Helios climbing high,
illuminating our lives
as his fiery chariot crosses the summer sky.
Yet as soon as rosy fingered Eos calls us from our beds
we change the time, banish the lark, bring back the dark,
saving the morning light to brighten up the night
where it will be frittered away in febrile denial
of the shadows that fell across the day.
Daylight won’t be held by any bank or goalers lock
so when it’s gone it’s gone despite the hands on the clock.
If you seek the clarity and insight that comes when living in the light
rather than stumbling and fumbling, befuddled and troubled
by the phantoms lurking in the shadows of the rock;
if you are drawn to the calmness of the dawn,
don’t delay the day or invite the night,
just pull back the curtains, open the door and explore.

 

The Hands of My Three Great Aunts.

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by Gail White.   Their skin was liver-spotted, bruised, wrinkled, the veins so prominent I was repelled. I was a child and they were old, long-widowed, shapeless, generous, kindly, full of tales and folklore, old Southern ladies who never put a hat on the bed in all their lives, because that was unlucky. To me, […]

Saved enough.

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by Diana Morley.   Am I frugal? As in do I not buy lattes wasting my earnings, my savings?  Of course! So frugal I make coffee only once a day, half a scoop, several drops of lowfat milk  so frugal, though widowed, I let only a few tears fall any one day to save some […]

The Longest Day.

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by Marissa Bell Toffoli.   Light dwindles, your smile brightens. You should be in bed, instead we’re running through the grass. A wild breeze kicks up. Cotton candy clouds witness our spinning games and laughter. I want to keep us in this togetherness that fills me up so there’s no room left for worries (words […]

A Note to Future Ovids.

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by Charles S. Kraszewski. My father said, When I die I’d like to come back as a hawk turning gyres high on the thermals of the summer air. What a way for a Catholic to talk. My Dad? Metempsychosis? Go figure. But, playing along, as for me, I’d dare aspire (no offence intended to any […]

Corso Umberto.

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by Charles S. Kraszewski.   Every morning at 8:15 they pack themselves into the red sardine can number 122 with their rafts plastic soccer balls beach umbrellas folding boards with cheap sunglasses and their own black bodies to doze all the way to Fontane Bianche. There, they’ll wander up and down the beach with inflatable […]

Cannon Beach.

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by David Bolton. We’re sitting on a petrified log, facing the turquoise Pacific. Chi Gong & Tai Chi have put our minds at rest… Huge rock in distance, half hidden in mist, as if nature has a secret to share with those who see…. We’ve come a long way to sit on this blanched log… […]

The Muse.

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by Jerzy Liebert.   How does the word so rush to the sound When another name calling is heard? How does the flame flash over the ground That it’s so bright in both heart and word? Translated by Charles S. Kraszewski  

Spring.

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by Jerzy Liebert. Each bird insanely trills. Stags rest their antlers on the breasts of birch. The blue sky aches for the green earth With flaring, trembling, moist nostrils. Leaves and sap burst from the trees. Drunkenly reel both clouds and beasts. Wonders in sunlit clearings — lily mists. In copses healthy bark snaps wide […]

The Greatness that was Greece.

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by Charles S. Kraszewski. It wasn’t Lucius Mummius who put an end to Greece. The self-inflicted wound was dealt ages before. We call it xenophobia, using the Greek word for it. Since they despised all other languages (and peoples) we Other People had to learn Greek. Otherwise, how could we compete with Persia in the […]