“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 …
The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
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 …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 is an illusion.” – Hue, from Avatar: The Last Airbender, “The Swamp” I don’t know about you, but I feel like the days this …
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. …
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, …
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 …
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? I’ve been asking myself that lately because it’s been tough to find the motivation to do it. It’s not that I …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“as I hunch in gnarly leather, drool, toothless,” #metaworkermonday
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 …
“In the dead and dark of night,/
upon a haunted gorge they rise.” #metaworkermonday
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
I freeze, startled by the sudden flight of a mud swallow against the backdrop of a tilt-up building, swarm of chirping notes I cannot decipher, …
The house across from mehas caught aflameand taken it against water The firemen are comingtheir trucks yelling attheir speed. They are dressedin their shieldsand are …
When it was the fashionI too measured out my life in coffee spoons It was not only to youthat some things made no sensebut to …
It was the kind of bar that would have had to struggle up several rungs of the social ladder to be considered a dive. Not …
may your eyelids be diaphanous parasols sheltering from the invasive light of the sunshielding as parables the blinding truthwhen love excites the eyesto things the heart …
It wasn’t like that. Our mother suckled us for years in the rank, familiar den. She chewed the deer meat until it was a fine …
Then the Billado Block burned down, and I had nowhere to live. “Well, shit,” I said to the guy standing next to me watching it …
I exist where you’ve kicked me Your boot rings the bell Cracks the shell Invites Hell’s inverted Sisters to rent a storefront At the …
It was just beneath the nipple of her heaving right breast. “What’s that?” asked Bordelli. Clarice didn’t seem to hear him. She kept bucking her …
Having little to his name when he died, the reading of Henry Fromm’s will went quickly. Nothing surprising or contentious. On paper he never did …
I sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried …
Someday we might meet,when time has melted in us,our lives look like dried river beds Would you then recognise my face? My face might appear …
There’s a man the silent world claims as Noah, standing at the cliff’s edge, looking down on us as we crawl across each other, his …
I fold the corners Of a very desperate sky. The stars I had to throw away, On highways that know Where they are going. With …
Entry Door Yes No Damage to exterior? X Interior? X [The lease says “no nails,” but upon her arrival in December it was …
INTERIOR FAMILY HOME – EVENING ADULT, any conscious human, late 20s to mid-30s, watching television in a beautiful suburban home they could never actually afford …
It was the upper floor of a solid 1950s style house in Piraeus with heavy ceiling fans and dust-laden blinds obscuring a view of the …
We will not subside, for there can be no epiphany; we march into the sand for the egrets, hunting them with our knives. No other …
I live in the pulse of unconscious patterns. My civilized mind remains incapable of interpreting the illuminated life I experience outside the limits of ordinary …
Halcyon and hurtful coexist in an apiary. On helicon’s rote appropriate ones reveille. In the middle of a horseshoe of memories I mime the lines …
everyday I am born like this – nothing ever happens for the first time I collect my shattered promises and get back home to my …
Come with me, it won’t be far; we have all night, and the seasons with it, in your heart: I’m dying. I’ll tell you about …
“Pickup for Angelo.” He leaned on the counter. “For who?” “Angelo.” He jerked his chin up—he had been told he mumbled. He had a deep …
[w]ham-o Sam-o [Suitors Up!] [yellow] [look out!] [look out!] rainbows of [arrows] candies of crushes [beads] and bangles [open the vessels] hit it now [hit …
Unrelenting passion in a sonneteers delusion moving in rhythm with the windblown grasses hand in hand on a path through the hemlocks written vows of …
A road divider on our thoroughfare has been constructing since three major eclipses, going under the idea scalpel by fickle engineers – flowers or trees …
Damian Campana is a Creative Writing student at a community college in Rochester, NY. He is an aspiring creator. He is passionate about telling …
Can your mind sustain the burden for the beating heart to heave? Will you bare the heaviness of being within a lightness of the form? …
He stood outside the door asking for directions, lost hope in hand. Paying the toll with a pocketful of dreams. Aspirations evaporating at the sound …
As the dusk creeps through the summit the once luscious sun dips below the rocky mounts And flocks of birds soar away weaving intricate patterns …
I was born a human jigsaw puzzle. I emerged from my mother’s womb, not as a whole baby, but in scattered pieces. The doctors worked …
Fragments of dreams scattered among the ruins of once lofty ambitions, buried along with lost loves and white lace promises Standing tall against the crumbling …
I’ve probably been inside more than 500 tunnels, caves, souterrains, or underground passages in my entire life. My first home was a kind of cave, …
Tsuki Amai’s wristwatch emitted a soft click, and she tugged gently at her ear to make sure, for the tenth time that day, that she …
It’s not smoggy like they say it is in London, at least I don’t think so, but the River Thames is filthier than I had …
The tweeker’s Boggy, alcoholic eyes Bulged unblinkingly Within inches of mine Setting the stage For mere players In this mosh pit At the intersection of …
It’s autumn now. The leaves are carrying quiet dust on their surfaces. Northern winds puff and relieve your skin from the unforgiving sun. Soon there …
Darling, listen. no matter what we do our fingers will end up blistered, our palms bloody if we look into the mirror long enough to …
Someone would love to have you for a daughter; Wouldn’t mind you in the attic, stealing their things. The walls would be yours, as …
The fog was making whispering sounds It was rising up from the earth Like spirits from the past I spit dust from my mouth …
Sometimes I like to reimagine religion and the stories I was told as a child, so that it fits the way I understand the world …
I lost my heart last night. It must have happened in my sleep. I didn’t notice at first, but when I looked in the mirror …
If I were to outlive you, I would feel the poet in me blackening, nails pulling in like a sea of petals in the mouth …
The letter I wrote Lilly first thing after I found out talks to her in the present tense, like she still exists, because she does …
Every morning I look in the mirror and hope for a different reflection. The problem with makeup is that it doesn’t cover every scar. And …
I reveal the parts I want you to see you think you know me masquerade ugly thoughts inside my head mourning at the side of …
I hold the moon like a baby in my arms. If I let it go, it will fall. The light of the night will die. …
The doctor’s handsome and that makes it worse… more bad news from the lips of handsome men. We need more tests, he says. Well no …
Hypertension: Each bus line a grime-filled artery, Each soup line snaking concrete corners, slithering in human filth like wet soil, wet and thick …
Writing isn’t only for novelists or poets. Screenwriters are writers, too! Below is an excerpt from the script of the upcoming web-series called Hypervision, which is …
Writing isn’t only for novelists or poets. Screenwriters are writers, too! Below is an interview with Steven Jay, the writer and creator of an upcoming …
Catacombs and catastrophe fill my head. I cannot sleep. We end up going for a drive. The car pushes past streetlights and traffic stops— little …
I’ve spent the last two years trying to figure out how to pull this trigger finger from my mouth and blast the sour blackness out into …
And The Metaworker is locked down through the end of 2016. Thank you to everyone who’s kept submitting, and especially to everyone who’s kept reading. …
portuguese lyric lilt xe’s, lifting ocean inflection lifted south american toneflexing a talker’s tongue one ganders in psychadelic wonder when they codeswitch– one is jealous …
A blank is waiting to get painted, a bank shimmers with slimes and silt. I have waited for you; liquid caresses, and the kisses of …
Madeline loves it And sits as Mother would. The priest is like her Father Dressed all in grey, Palms fluttering with Paper clowns, Legs and …
To be man means to reach toward being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God. Jean-Paul Sartre …
This one’s a very special post. We’re presenting to you the work of the highly accomplished Albanian Poet Irsa Ruçi, both translated, and in its …
Success is a function of desire when I was younger it evolved into an adrenaline addiction Instead of running from death I decided to chase …
I’m always finding myself writing about fire Maybe because I always got so much to burn maybe cause I’m a fire sign it’s easy because …