Hello from Your New Editor-in-Chief
Hello from Elena, your new Editor-in-Chief!
The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“The bang came afterwards, as if the earth had just regained consciousness and gravity returned with violent force.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
The moons of twenty-eight yesterdaysare strung across silent twilight,a pearl necklace on the plump blue throat of a cyanotic stillborn prepared for burial. Under the phasing …
around these parts, you’d hear about trail angels, their wings spread between those parched white blazes. offering plenty and good.take your rest beneath their wings, …
Step 1: Take your shorn hair, barrette the sides with glimmer, the way you want to be a mermaid, tails extended, breaking hearts with the …
I’ve put the sign on the door for a reason: “Day sleeper, don’t ring or knock,” but the doorbell rings anyway, just when I’m dozing …
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, and Mel talk with Oisín Breen about his poem “The Borderland Furies” and about his new book of poetry, Lillies on …
The sun peers down from above, spilling light on the ground; the clouds hang haloedby a fading gold. Daylight’s verve recedes as the purpling sky …
if you are listening, I am here, wracked with a Martian longing dreaming of stowaway spiders who would weave sickly webs over semi-important fixtures: reviled queen who presides …
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, Mel, and Cerid talk with Isabel O’Hara Walsh about her short fiction piece “In the Willow Garden”. Content Warning: We discuss …
A piece was missing. It was a puzzle print of George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte laid out on …
The car, an older gas-powered Lincoln, rolled up smoothly, making no splash in the curbside puddle. Driver’s face (human, of course, the Others could operate …
The woman at the cafe was out of breath as she sat in the window seat looking through the early night at the few groups …
I asked about her yearnings, her desires, as I suspected they might, perhaps, mesh with my own. It was worth a try, an attempt at some sort of shared, miraculous
camaraderie.
DetourmentiaIt began with her putting the kettle in the fridge and calling everybody ‘darling’ because shecouldn’t remember their names. Then she copied the young women’s …
The only word I understand is monsieur. A sling of unintelligible French blindsides me as I walk down the street; and though I have no …
“What are we waiting for?” Chris asked, staring at me from the passenger seat of the car. I shifted in the driver’s seat. “Lorenzo told …
I’m making a video game for you to live inside, since you can’t live inside the world anymore. I’ve never made a game before, so …
Hey folks! It’s the editor-in-chief Matthew Maichen. This won’t be a long post. We’ve had a great 2022, and everything that we’ve published has been …
The woman passes every day with her pink sneakers and floral running pants and cute son in a navy uniform. The son talks a blue …
“Older brother?” “Not now, I’m busy.” The papers shuffled make a noise like a river on a bank. “Older brother?” “What is it?” “Nothing.” Outside …
the night has not stolen the taste and shape of my grass-drowned flesh. after all, your croaks already drink the air from my lungs until …
In a house, in a heart, a demon lurked. The girl found it in her dead brother’s skull buried in the backyard. She looked into …
Tomorrow is too late. I’ve been listeningto the ground lick its lips, laying plans to closeon your heart. To beat the earth, brown batter, to bake …
Lock Howe grew up in rural Tennessee in a conservative, Baptist area. Raised atheist and liberal, Lock struggled with feelings of isolation and confusion, themes …
For Devan Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in …
The boy feigns sleep, but he is ready to spring. Two children stalk his bed, dark-light-girl-boy, clad in spring-green and ochre, barefoot both. The boy …
On my sister’s 21st birthday, I visited her at the Cook County Jail. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so annoyed to see her …
You wore your grey fate perfectly—laughter, golden touch. It was a show, of course. Even as tiny hope waved over private blue melancolia, it stirred up a sludge,lingering …
Lock Howe grew up in rural Tennessee in a conservative, Baptist area. Raised atheist and liberal, Lock struggled with feelings of isolation and confusion, themes …
I want to scream until my voice blistersAround the hot cinders of the words I spitI burn out next to the Sun and SisterWhere my …
Trigger Warning: sexual themes and abuse In my career as a sex worker, I accept gifts with poise and grace. It’s an odd twist in …
When I think about it, none of this would have happened if Roger weren’t such a slob. After Roger left for the gym, I decided …
You and I will read our ways into the eternal whatever—questioning, wondering, wandering under skies grown gray with concern or maybe apathy. We’ll play outside until the streetlights …
The Mother sifts through the soil, searching. Using her fingers like a sieve, she tries to find the thin filament sprouts in the mulch and …
The most beautiful woman my father had ever seen, Except, he kept insisting, my mother, of course, Hailed from Grimstone, Stratton parish, in Dorset. So, …
There’s a distinct scent to the air right before a Firestorm breaks: acrid and sulfuric, with a touch of sweet smoke. It manifests moments before …
my youth has drooped, the trees in the forest too.beard grown thick, wet the bed black;death calls our names alphabetically,the rooster still crows in the …
(+_+)? A decade lost your last message sprang back to life today :O unwittingly resuscitated by a software upgrade. : – ) Happy Thursday! Such a great….xD …laughed so …
The sky is bigger in Texas. The trees in the Midwest loomed large, stretching their branches upward and forming green canopies that provided shelter. But …
Sometimes I come out here to think—I’m tempted to say “about death,” but that isn’t socially acceptable, and not quite true. Not even death’s cousin, …
It’s a blue-lit Danish summer night; the calendar is nearing summer solstice; birds are singing at the ungodly hour of 3 AM. Pt. 1 blue lightblue …
I am lying flat on the ground in a quiet living room in a quiet home in the kind of quiet suburb everyone’s at least …
My Friends and I Started Having Premonitions About Future Lovers Sonia dreamt of being sawed in half by a mustached magician, rugged steel grinding rosewood …
sand dollar the boy buys the moon the ocean chestnut cache the squirrel forgets a forest root cellar Hunger Moon in the bushel baskets Messier …
When dust rolls in like an eruption and you can hardly see across the street, and everything else (city, mountains, sky) is hidden by a …
A golden retriever of a womanjust met and she’s practically sheddingin your lapshe steps away from packing heroverstuffed bagwell-meaning but not seeing boundaries that should …
winter haiku dark lines of sleepingtrees draw stencils in the skyabove pure white ground winter haiku icicles flourishgray clouds linger exactlywhere they are meant to …
Since our son was born, you always pull out and cum on your side. I roll onto your side of the bed, still warm and …
In this final episode of the special editors chat, Matthew, Elena, Mel and Cerid get personal. They talk about their own writing projects and how they approach their writing, they share what they get up to outside of their fiction lives and to finally wrap things up, they provide a list of great plugs from recent reads they loved.
The Dongle You thought you were arriving at the train an hour early, but you got the times wrong and happened to get there just …
Rhys Lee is a Masters candidate at Mount Saint Mary’s University. He has poetry published in The Driftwood at Point Loma Nazarene University. Image
The wind howled and tore through the treetops, and our horses, Highland and Orion, crowded together to share their heat, but I was warm and …
Atlantis Without Birds Marble women in gardens used to reach into the sky and gather birds by the armful. Raindrops brought them down in scores to swallow worms they …
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, Mel, and Cerid talk about how they got into writing and why they are involved in the publishing world, even as …
Afternoon. Deep afternoon. Long afternoon. Too deep. Too long. Sylvie in her quilted bed. Try to sleep. Go to sleep. Quickly now! Go to sleep. …
My mother sayslife is goodshe is happydown sixmaybe seven —- no, eight poundssince catching upto her too-thin sisterwho is losing weight to chemofastand I want …
Jamie Spenser‘s poetry has been published in New York Quarterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Disappointed Housewife. His outpourings about TV commercial production and the art-rock band Devo …
FATE Quibble spends the day imagining what he might do, if he had the opportunity. He scolds himself that most of the things he dreams …
Jeremy Bock is a West Virginia native and technologist currently expatting Bangkok with his wife and daughter. His novel, Caroline, is independently published and available …
Lots of human brainseventually get to wherethey saynone of this had to bethis way.Other brainsknew all alongthat everything is necessary.It’s sad, though,because so many thingsare …
I stood and watched you sleeping, hadstood there watching for nearly five minutes inthe shadow of the hallway for nearly five minutes of circustime before I …
Matthew, Elena, Mel, and new intern Cerid talk about how they fell in love with reading, then move into a history lesson about how The Metaworker got started, and how Mel and Cerid joined the team.
Emerging writer Zoë Blaylock was educated in the school of hard knocks and droll encounters but credentialed by Harvard. She works in research/healthcare ethics in …
At dawn, in the distance, a kitchen radio slips commodity prices through a screen door into a farmyard, echoing off the metallic green of a …
Vincent closed his laptop and stared at the wall. The afterglow of an Excel spreadsheet burned across his retina. He waited for it to fade …
It’s the way I pause when I come across Goethe andwhisper the name—Gir-tah.To make sure I still remember how it’s supposed to sound on the tongue. To remind myself it …
The Art Gallery I pop into the art gallery lined with textured paintings of the seaside. The artist greets me as she works wielding a …
I sometimes wonder if people are crazy or from some other planet. But I am not complaining. Why should I? Not at all. After all, …
Featuring original art by Cerid Jones The kid next door had stopped screaming and was now bashing out a single flat note on a toy …
Hole here. Hole there.No treasure. Not even athud. Days. Nights.So much dirt. Some people askwhat I’m hoping to find. I’m tempted to show themthe tunnels …
If only Joyce hadn’t taken that damn selfie. Her and Tate, laughing at a truck stop in Mexico, drinking beer with lime, his cotton t-shirt …
Helen Nancy Meneilly is an Irish poet whose work explores issues of identity, language, and womanhood. She is currently studying for her MA in Creative …
Prologue to a Memoir Based on Love Letters to my Dead Husband By Margaret S. Mandell Sunday, December 10, 2017 My Dearest Love: October 2015. …
Pulled from the mouth of the mother tongue. These words are all I carry now. They bend. They crack. They disappear. They hide inside the …
Rona piles rice from path to porch like snowdrifts sprinkled with crayon colored carrots, peas, corn– until the guardrail disappears under an ever-growing mountain of …
When I awake I Like to think about us two Alone forever Sweetest saccharine Inside your mouth I lose my Self hour after hour Diet …
The burial begins slow, carrying up the earth over the barrow for the devils, each in turn highing their breath and turning over the gravel, …
night falls like a brick. urgent tongue of wind stuck to the back of my neck, hair wrapped around my throat. fist of keys in …
I was afraid of my abusive and controlling ex-husband, but I didn’t know this until 10 years after I divorced him. I wrote hidden poems, …
From my hurt back the snow-lit predawn sky is pewter, or lava, according to my best guess color chart on Pinterest. “Pewter” works, but I …
From Atlanta to New York City, I went tripping, delivering packages, on buses and trains, stopping—three days—in Cincinnati. There’s the arc. Greyhound issues you an …
When in a supermarket in a town not your own do not start screaming “Where are the olives? Where are the fucking olives?” as you …
Ash Evan Lippert is a clay artist and emerging queer poet residing in the South Carolina upstate. Their poetry and fiction center on the exploration …
In the sweltering summer of 1966, I have a kitten who will not cooperate under the Arizona sun that glares at me from its cloudless …
Autumn snapped my spine like the sudden flash of a spark, waking up the dark. She brought rain and left me blooming, treading my fresh soles on top of …
I am sitting on my meditation cushion, cross-legged and with eyes closed, warmed by the afternoon sun shining through the glass patio door in front …
Jerry backed the ’68 Ford Fairlane into a driveway, then jammed it into Drive, and stomped on the accelerator. The tires squealed and he crossed …
At fifteen Anne bought her first action figure—Wonder Woman. When she saw her on television in her blue starry shorts, legs rising out of red …
The more times I go back for more and find it there like a bowl of dogfood left out on the back deck by an …
The first cockroach appeared during a tour for prospective graduate students. Being a laser lab, we had turned the lights out and configured exhibitions of …
Hello folks! It’s Matthew. It’s been a while since I’ve made an announcement, I know. You may have noticed that we put Searching for The …
Now is the time to find color where you can—in poinsettias, pine trees, fire and wine,or strings of Christmas lights hung like prayersto glow warm …
In vest, short shorts, quick reflex points, our up and over, chain-link fence, we traded jokes, paraded skills, especially under watch of girls, as learnt …
Two a.m., well into her night shift at the NICU, was never a good time to receive a call on her cell. “He’s gone,” Jason’s …
At the Senior Center, we challenge stereotypes about old ladies. We practice yogaoutdoors for “social distance.” If it starts to drizzle, we ignore it. If …
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, Marina, and Mel talk with Sam Asher about his beautifully strange story Boy, Deer, Chair. We discuss symbolism, inherited trauma, pantsers …
without askingearthquakes rumbled to announce thearrival of mountains rivers roared to forewarn rocksof their ravage winds howled to demand fishermenback to shore wildfires raged to …
Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, Russell Willis, has been featured in THE POET Magazine Profile Series and his poetry has been published in over twenty-five …