Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

poem

Indefinitely.

by

by Cheryl Vargas.

 

The legal size manilla envelope is too long to fit in the basket alongside my other folders, its size is as awkward as its contents. Inside are two long pieces of paper weightless, a sparrow’s feather.

I am pretty sure my brother’s death certificate can be shredded now. Five years is a long time to hold onto a useless date and cause.

It feels as if the ink has not completely dried on my mother’s document.

Loneliness is my father’s proper name. The envelope holds space enough for him. A paper trail, white and thin, a distant marker of surrender marching towards.

Fooling Days.

by

by Barry Vitcov. What did you save when the sun set later than the day before? Were the colors muted, less vivid or spectacular? A blur of lengthening shadows? Do longer days rise or set more gradually, with subdued edges. Do we become more indistinct in daylight? More defined in the dark like etchings in […]

Saving Daylight.

by

by Benjamin White. The Golden Age Is gilded greed, So save your integrity In a shoebox Under your bed Or in your top drawer With your secret hopes, Or buried In the back yard Where your mind And memories Intersect and meet To redirect the heat you feel When you peel the sunshine From the […]

The Gone Years.

by

by Richard LeDue. The 1960s and 70s are dead like an old drunk who killed their liver to save their heart, only to die of in a car accident while complaining about seatbelts to an empty whisky bottle, and the 1980s still alive, pissing into a bag and calling the nurse “Midge,” which leaves death […]

It was simpler, then.

by

by Rosalie Hendon.   Gazing through time and memories Up you went on the swingset through the summer afternoon warm with the droning of bees, a gulf didn’t gape between us then Water was just water, not a thing you could drown in  

On the Bench by the River.

by

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 […]

Pull back the curtains and open the door.

by

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 […]

The Hands of My Three Great Aunts.

by

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.

by

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.

by

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 […]