“Getting Somewhere” by Cameron Morse
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 …
Author: The Metaworker
We are The Metaworker, an online literary magazine where great stories are forged.
Our mission is to publish great things to read. Send us the stuff you don’t think will be published anywhere else. We want new ideas, words that make us ponder, narratives that upend stereotypes. We don’t care if you’re an established writer or someone who’s never been published before, if you're a student or returning to writing after a career in something else, if you're 16 or 80, if you live in the United States, in India, in New Zealand, in Mexico – if you’ve got something you think needs to be shared with the world, submit it to us!
We publish prose, poetry, art, and more on our website every Monday at noon PST, plus we sometimes post fun extras (like our podcast episodes) on Wednesdays or Fridays.
“Mortuary Rites of the Blattidae” by Patrick M Hare
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 …
Nominations and Internships
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 …
“A Winter Prayer for Color” by Ash Evan Lippert
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 …
“Hoops” by Stephen Kingsnorth
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 …
“Rare” by Joanne Howard
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 …
“Pandemic Yoga” by Judith Beth Cohen
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 …
The Metaworker Podcast | 010 Boy, Deer, Chair by Sam Asher
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 …
“The Calling” by Christina Eagen
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 …
“Undisturbed” by Russell Willis
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 …
“Indistinguishable” by Kenton K. Yee
When I was in eighth grade, Dad started feeling “neither here nor there.” The harder he tried to relax, the more violently he’d jitter. The …
“Eyelash Extensions” by Clive Aaron Gill
Brittani, the unmarried maid of honor at her younger sister’s wedding in a small village church, spent years in graduate school. It infuriated her that …
“Meditation in an Office Tower” by Dale Cottingham
Thrusting one creased pant leg in front of the other, canter-leaving ankles, knees, thighs, my leather shoes clacking slate as I amble toward and away, …
“Trenches, Rats, and Watercolors” by Geoff Watkinson
My internship duties in the Fine and Decorative Arts Department of the British National Army Museum included organizing and documenting collections of photographs and rearranging …
“The Art of Remembering Your History” by Christian Ward
I do the same ritual every morning while the clouds wrap their blankets around the sunlight: Practice Italian and Spanish. Trace my fingers along paths of cheekbones inheritedfrom …
“Loch Ness Monster in the Rain at Night” by David Henson
A fang of lightning crashesa branch into the wind-clawed loch. Thunder drives eels to the bottom. Water flashes downa mountain rising through the skin of …
“Suburban Complaint #1988—Skunked” by Peter Dabbene
It was late at night, and the dog was barking—that is, until she suddenly voiced a squeal that made it sound like she’d been stabbed …
“Scrutiny” by Tim Frank
I played with the curls of your clipped auburn hair that I kept sealed in your grandma’s silver locket, because you always said I didn’t …
“So Many Ways to Live” by Victoria Woolf Bailey
When that moment arrives(by car, by bus, by daybreak) We live in it like a house(condo, apartment, tent down by the river) Imagining we may …
“In the Willow Garden” by Isabel O’Hara Walsh
Down in the willow garden, where me and my true love did meet,There we sat a-courting, my love fell off to sleep – “Rose Connelly,” …
“Mussel” by Christian Ward
Every shell is dipped in night. Place an ear against the ceramic to eavesdrop on fox squabbles, crows watching rubbish bags left split open like …
“In the Kingdom of Songora” by Linda McMullen
James was a senior when I was a freshman at Salem North High School; I fell in love with him when I heard he’d persuaded …
“Drowned Man Lives Again” by John Grey
There was a lot of crazy thrashing at first and I was cursing myself for not keeping at it with those swimming lessons, and I …
“Abracadabra” by Christina Marable
The man I loved as my grandfather was a tall, strong, broad-shouldered man who carried a fake ear in his back pocket. With his indigo …
“Interrogative Sestina” by Mark J. Mitchell
Who is the bride of August? Wheredoes she send her lost birds and whatare they born to see? You? They sing. Who,precisely, are they naming? …
The Metaworker Podcast | 009 Ruins by Mary Paulson
Episode Description: In this episode, Matthew, Marina, and Elena talk with Mary Paulson about her poem, Ruins. We talk about writing poetry to express deep …
“Passing Through” by Dale Cottingham
“There is no answer” you said “to whyin an inquiry because an inquiry is to find out why,”your voice rising over us like a storm,a …
“Out of the Picture” by Lou H. Second
A painter lives in my town. A talented painterno doubt. A famous painter too. His creationshave been known to save souls and to bestowone upon …
Microfiction by Megha Nayar
Grievances David calls as I’m retiring for the night. “You really need to stop spoiling that dog, Mom!” he begins without preamble when I pick …
“Cherry” by Stephen Kingsnorth
Why do I keep the best till lastwhen eating cake;quite unlike wine.My mindful taste budsfind their pace, start marksfrom first eye-captured plate,declared by sharp seep …
“An American Experience” by Dale Cottingham
While I waited at roadside I thought,why not try some loveliness. So I did.I saw visions in far reaches, feltthe soft touch of silence, melodiescame …
“The prison is like a Victorian asylum” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
The prison is like a Victorian asylum, and carefully arranged. The grounds are tastefully laid out, each tree with its own hillock of greeenery and …
“In My Space” by Anthony Ward
I look into my eyes in order to witness nebula reciprocating light from the midst of darkness residing behind them radiating with life out of …
“In Between” by Kelly Claytor
Are you dead, Maria? One Hour It seems so. Seven Days Their black clothes. Their black veils. Their white handkerchiefs, dry in their pockets. None …
“Before” by Margaret Krusinga
Margaret Krusinga lives on sixty acres she and her husband manage loosely for wildlife. Diagnosed with MS in 1976, she graduated college under a cloud, …
“All my Ex-Employees are Crazy” by Joel Robert Ferguson
The polar bears are circling us, the John CageChristmas mix, the hors d’oeuvres and those bodies that servethem. adjacent, a sealkeeps practising the same underwater …
“Maybe Next Time, Pat” by Mike McLaughlin
The man’s souvenirs were in a box somewhere. He had kept it handy for a few years then put it away. In a desk, then …
The Metaworker Podcast | 008 Rangoli Man by Mina Rozario
Matthew, Marina, Melissa, and Elena talk about Mina Rozario’s flash fiction fantasy story, Rangoli Man. We gush about saying a lot in very few words, the utopian fairy-tale tone, and the story’s fascinating dive into Indian culture.
The Metaworker Podcast | 007 Minotaurs by Lane Talbot
Episode Description: Matthew, Marina, and Melissa gush about Lane Talbot’s Minotaurs before asking him about how he approaches his craft, the art of writing the …
The Metaworker Podcast | 002 The Dog in You by Omar Hussain
Episode Description: The Metaworker Editors (Matthew Maichen, Elena L. Perez, Marina Shugrue, Darin Milanesio, and Melissa Reynolds) talk to Omar Hussain about his wonderful piece …
The Metaworker Podcast | 001 The Dinner Party by Alexa Hailey
Episode Description: In this pilot episode, Editor-in-Chief Matthew Maichen and then-intern (now editor) Melissa Reynolds have a conversation about The Dinner Party by Alexa Hailey, …
“African Stamps” by Brecht De Poortere
In my first memory as a child, I sit naked in a garden somewhere in the Congo watching ants scutter in line. They lug the …
“Waiting” by Christine Webster-Hansen
Eyes linger, unchanged photos thickened with dust,body-locked, estranged face gazing at the mirror,clutching at the mind, recalling memories dimly-flung,cycling again through sitcom and rerun.Bras holding …
“On Half-Inch Heroes” by Ben Umayam
Like all Filipinos, at the age of puberty, I became obsessed with penis size. I used to be very guarded about my bare body. What …
“North Jersey” by John O’Brien
Train tops tick tackingnext to half melted snow banksholding up the trafficlike everything else.Ruminating on pavementin our collective toyotawhich will always havethose wheezing tires.My face …
“Boy, Deer, Chair” by Sam Asher
There’s a cloud in the room that the boy knows as ‘vapour’, knows it in the way he knows his emotions, knows it in the …
“The Surgeon” by Cameron Morse
If I check my Facebookfor likes I must want to be liked but why no one who sends me wishes knows my birthday …
“Waking Up in California” by Jennifer Novotney
My mother is already uplong retired from work, she putters aroundher house all day, buying things and giving them awaycalling friends, taking short walkskeeping herself …
“A Future Leviathan’s Prodigious Sister” by Mina Rozario
They called me incandescent. Queens and counts, dukes and earls alike sat enthralled when I performed, swept up in a sea of notes that would …
“Jupiter’s Raindrops” by John O’Brien
Jupiter’s raindrops area phenomenon thatfollows close behindmoonlight and aftersexand the sonnetof moments wherecollecting my pantsmixes deliberately withstaring and thispale shimmer ofmelancholy. This isa lesson inanger, …
“Turning Back, Going Forward” by E Martin Pederson
It seems like paradise, but it’s a mirage. No more concrete walkways through the wired treelings, by the serious cyclers, no kids with frisbee dogsNo …
“Physics and the Corridor Removed” by James B. Nicola
When I greet “semi-strangers,” sometimes strangers, with Hellos and How-Are-Yous you say they do not warrant, it’s because of Physics, and the empty seat that …
“The System of Considerations” by Keko Prijatelj
InsectsPerfected in that specific environmentIn thousands of nights & darksCrashing into that bulbLight impacts of ferocious attacksCongratulated admiredEach character with its own specialtyA monolith of …
“Rangoli Man” by Mina Rozario
Maya’s entire town had awoken one morning to find swarms of people milling outside their doors, their skins a mottled mix of colors: sunny yellows, …
“Perfusion” by Cameron Morse
Perfuse mebrain scanner Push your fluidsthrough my blood vessels my tissues Let whatever in me that is at issue be scanned interior scar star-birth tumor …
“The Body Electric in Several Takes” by Edison Jennings
An ivy educated American male, bespoke suited but modest and sincere, once seated and lighted to good effect and confident of his look and manner …
“The Road to Cavalry” by Arthur L Wood
How many days to Calvary? I asked the rich man’s child. Depends on how you’re travelling; Are you dying or exiled Or seeking sweet contentedness? …
“Dead Man’s Party” by Laura Becker
Laura Becker is a visual art student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her work explores emotional and psychological contemplations through collaging and fusions of …
“The Mosquito and the Bell Jar” by Carol Motta
Our balsa-sweet Mosquito flies low and slow into the burning sun, undetectable by radarI hear only air scratching past the belly of the holdNo bomb …
“We have Always Lived in the Castle” by Tara Campbell
We have always lived within these walls,this gleaming, shining castle on a hill,a beacon held aloft for one and allto marvel at, imagining the thrill …
“The Shape of the Laugh in Your Throat” by Edie Meade
From downstairs I hear you playfully yell “panties!” with the tantrum-bound toddler who is disemboweling my underwear drawer. By the shape of the laugh in …
“Diadem for the End of the World” by Randi Sanders
Seven billion was the end predicted by that movie where the population was fed on a questionable combination of soy, lentils, and plankton that wasn’t …
“Antidote” by Kate Copeland
A fire sunset facing her, thunder didn’t show, how much she even wished for this sky to hurt, to rive in two, boiling the river …
“The Borderland Furies” by Oisin Breen
On questioning circumstance;One must accept that it is often mere collision.That it is neither the (un)holy they, nor a waxwork trinity, at fault for the …
“Cardinal Sin” by Jennifer Fox
Julie stared at the cardinal laying in the snow outside her living room window. It was like fresh crimson on white porcelain tile which made …
“Strangers in a Strange Lawyer’s Home” by Jason McGlone
This solarium could be a craggyoverhang in the desert or a yurtburning sandalwood inside, plates of rosewaterjellies awaiting us, or a dumpster letting in moonlightbetween …
Paradise is a Feeling by Stella Meadows
It’s a perfect day for a cigarette. When I smoke I prefer a menthol cigarette, or a “Minty Fresh,” as a friend of a friend …
Nettle Fringed Earth by Melissa Reynolds
This month we’ve got a creative non-fiction piece from Mel, our editorial intern. Here’s what she’s got to say about it: Nettle Fringed Earth was …
Writer and the Stress Beast by Melissa Reynolds
I sit down to write, exhausted and drained after a long day of managing online classes (both mine and my children’s) and all my other …
A Writer and Dungeons and Dragons by Melissa Reynolds
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) about three years ago. I didn’t know much about the game and approached it as something new to …
Hagiography, 13 Reasons Why, and understanding the implications of our work by Matthew Maichen
Disclaimer: Before writing this, I watched season 1 of the Netflix show Thirteen Reasons Why, and the season 1 special: Beyond the Reasons. I also …
“Dopo Mezzonatte” by Marina Kazakova
Dopo mezzanotte! Dopo, dopo! The door pops open, out of the dust the ocean unfolds under the ropewalker’s high gloss black shoes. He floats among …
“Plywood World” by Fabrice Poussin
Another stormy night in their neighborhood a warning came for twisters, hail and fire no one said anything about ghosts in the dark. Eerie hours …
“The Crack Up” by Steve Carr
Morning, a hot wind blowing from the east sent the tall yellow prairie grass bowing in ripples toward the old house. Colin leaned against the …
“The Road to Gold Ridge” by Jennifer Swallow
The photos on the website of the Gold Ridge Inn showed a log structure with a wrap-around porch and a hitching post for the horses …
” ‘Ain Ghazal” by Robert Beveridge
In a chamber with three hundred ninety eyes there is no place not to be seen. No blind spots. The corners, the ceiling, on the …
“Death and Mercy” by Kim Malinowski
She wasn’t a phoenix, but she knew ash. She painted herself with coals, with cinders. War paint disguising the woman of the woods. She felt …
“Coffee Cup, Empty” by DAH
This dimly-lit café, there’s a voice then two, then three speaking like a detuned triangle with so much impatience. Winter, dense and black, crams itself …
“Horseshoes.” by DS Maolalai
somewhere up here you might bite the whole horizon. love pours in like an emptied sack of apples. tastes fresh like apples, and smells like …
Time in a Coronavirus World by Elena Lucia Perez
“Time is an illusion.” – Hue, from Avatar: The Last Airbender, “The Swamp” I don’t know about you, but I feel like the days this …
Zoom Fatigue and Quarantine Reads by Darin Milanesio
You’ll have to forgive me for having such a short newsletter this month. Are you exhausted? Me too. April really is the cruelest of months. …
Preview: The Story That Folded Into Itself by Marina Shugrue
There’s no getting around the fact that this has been a very unusual month. Here in the States, we’re facing the first impacts of COVID-19, …
“An Article Containing Absolutely No Sane Reason to Write Novels” by Matthew Maichen
We’ve been running The Metaworker for a while, when life doesn’t get in the way. I’ve also been writing something almost the entire time we’ve …
“Spinning the Sensualist” by Michael Grotsky
One lost Saturday night, around the last rays of the summer that never was, Yoshimi and William-James, one of the finer couples in their little …
Why Do We Write? by Elena Lucia Perez
Why do we write? I’ve been asking myself that lately because it’s been tough to find the motivation to do it. It’s not that I …
Give Me Lists or Give Me Death by Darin Milanesio
It’s the end of the year and the end of the decade and I have lists on my mind. Compiling lists of things to read, …
“So Dark, Up Above” by Emily Ruth Taylor
Sure, no one ever said that people were getting their powers from the rain. Tommy guessed it had something to do with all those big …
Focusing on Your Creative Goals When You’ve Sold Out by Marina Shugrue
I’ve been a sellout since I was twenty-two, technically. That was the year I turned a seasonal copywriting job in the fashion industry into a …
“The Juicer” by Cameron Morse
In the dream, I’m falling. I tell you I’m falling. One arm hooked onto the ice shelf, the other wrapped about my boy, I fall …
“Outsider Art” by Joe Bishop
“as I hunch in gnarly leather, drool, toothless,” #metaworkermonday
“Presence” by Matt Dennison
The summer after my first year of college the KKK had a presence on Main Street in my hometown for a few hours. Don’t know …
“The Outcast Dead” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
“In the dead and dark of night,/
upon a haunted gorge they rise.” #metaworkermonday
“Barbed Wires” by Ria Banerjee
Did you, my beloved, notice the barbed wiresthat run along the length of the city,to separate you from me?Such walls of divisiveness are man-made:penetrating your …
“Maui” by Cameron Morse
We go grocery shopping with a pregnant woman who does and does not want the Hawaii rolls, a woman who drops the cockroach in a …
“Longing/Desire” by Dr. Koshy AV
The longing of the round peg to become squareto belong to the holeand that of the piece of the jigsaw puzzleto be fitted into make it …
“Two Mothers and a Mulberry Tree” by John Noland
Soft as buckskin and long as a train’s whistle, mourning dove calls drift down the summer afternoon, signaling the coming evening coolness. I listen hard …
“Garfield Books” by Jeremy Szuder
I sit and I stare, trying to peerinto the back of my beautiful sons’ eyesbecause I am looking for somethingthat I soon begin to realize,I …
Welcome to The Forge
We’ve got a new thing for you all: a newsletter! We’ve been wanting to start this for a while because there’s so much awesome content …