“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 …
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.
“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 …
“Grace” by Jeff Burt
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 Neighborhood is Burning” by Kaileen Campbell
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 …
“Non-Belonging” by Dr. Koshy AV
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 …
“Off the Deep End” by Richard Risemberg
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 …
“Blessing” by Jeff Burt
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 …
“Romulus” by Charles Rafferty
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 …
“The Night the Billado Block Burned Down” by Elizabeth Gauffreau
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 …
“Trouble Every Day VI” by Glen Armstrong
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 …
“South of the Nipple” by Paul Negri
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 …
“Stripped” by James la Vigne
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 …
“It was Slow” by Kaileen Campbell
I sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried …
“Reclamation” by Mallika Bhaumik
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 …
“He’ll Hear it Again” by Edward Lee
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 …
“Folded Sky” by Sayan Aich Bhowmik
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 …
The Missing Brutal Honesty in the Final Walk-Through with the Soon-To-Be-Ex-Tenant by Erika Murdey
Entry Door Yes No Damage to exterior? X Interior? X [The lease says “no nails,” but upon her arrival in December it was …
“Obliviol” by Jason A. Bartles
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 …
On Watermelon Street by John Short
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 …
“45th Parallel” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
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 …
“Almost Rimbaud” by Mary Shanley
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 …
“Auscultation” by Sanjeev Sethi
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” by Abhilipsa Sahoo
everyday I am born like this – nothing ever happens for the first time I collect my shattered promises and get back home to my …
“Ash Lee” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
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 …
“Buddy” by Benjamin Austin
“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 …
![“Game [ON]” by Henry Crawford](https://themetaworker.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/4906597504_d3d1ee9274_b.jpg)
“Game [ON]” by Henry Crawford
[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 …
“Dark Side Whispers” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
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 …
“Sea Moon” by Sheikha A.
A road divider on our thoroughfare has been constructing since three major eclipses, going under the idea scalpel by fickle engineers – flowers or trees …
“How to Draw a Circle” by Damian Campana
Damian Campana is a Creative Writing student at a community college in Rochester, NY. He is an aspiring creator. He is passionate about telling …
“Thoughts of Steak Tartare” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
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? …
“At What Price” by Ann Christine Tabaka
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 …
I Am Scared of the Night by Indunil Madhusankha
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 …
“Jigsaw” by Amber West
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 …
“Daymare” by Ann Christine Tabaka
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 …
“Tunnels, Caves, Helmets” by Edd Rose
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, …
“Truth Conditions” by Natalie Einselen
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 …
“Looking Out From My London Flat” by Kelsey Parrotte
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 …
“Shakespeare in the Dark” by Peter Streitz
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 …
“To an Alzheimer’s Child” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi
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 …
“Dead Self thoughts reincarnated in words” by Stela Xega
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 …
“Attic Kitty” by Anna Keeler
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 …
“I Spit Dust” by Darin Milanesio
The fog was making whispering sounds It was rising up from the earth Like spirits from the past I spit dust from my mouth …
“How We Love” by Lauren Brodowski
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 …
“Ventricle” by Amber West
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” by Ellen Webre
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 …
“Verb Tenses” by Meli Ewing
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 …
“The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes” by Marina Shugrue
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 …
“Masquerade” by Laurie Frisbey
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 …
“Stretch” by Sandra White
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. …
“Judy and Modern Medicine” by John Grey
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” by Maya Castleman
Hypertension: Each bus line a grime-filled artery, Each soup line snaking concrete corners, slithering in human filth like wet soil, wet and thick …
Excerpt from Hypervision Episode 1
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 …
Writer Interview: Steven Jay, Creator of Hypervision
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 …
“On South Providence Road, 11:34 PM” by Tonya Eberhard
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 …
“Get Up Get Down Get Outro” by Taylor Han
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 …
Upcoming Changes
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. …
“Vienna Night 3: Brazilian Exchange Students” by Jesse Swire
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 …
“The Soul is Water” by Sudeep Adhikari
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 …
“Sunday School” by Natalie Crick
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 …
“In Sartre Ward” by Michael Paul Hogan
To be man means to reach toward being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God. Jean-Paul Sartre …
“A Passage” by Irsa Ruçi
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 …
“Interview with a Children’s Book Author” by Ben Nardolilli
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 …
“Confessionals” by Chestina Craig
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 …
“Omen Sketches” by Rachelle Pinnow
Rachelle Pinnow is also a professional geologist and a part-time writer. A graduate of the University of Calgary’s creative writing program, her short stories and …
“GET A JOB, LOS ANGELES” by Tadeu Bijos
Dude driving, dude driving vast expanses, dude fucking up on the GPS, dude asking for directions, dude getting off on the right off-ramp and hitting the ocean …
Happy Birthday to The Metaworker!
Too bad there’s no internet cake. It’s a year later, and we didn’t think we’d last a year. Q: You didn’t? A: No. We really …