“The Laptop of God” by KG Newman
You’d expect the power button to be a rare diamond fueling a holographic desktop, folders overflowing in bitcoin. Or that answers just appear, thoughts as …
The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
You’d expect the power button to be a rare diamond fueling a holographic desktop, folders overflowing in bitcoin. Or that answers just appear, thoughts as …
To know life is to greet knowing you won’t unmeet. To know life is to see your creators split into demigods, degrading into man and …
Gilded morning shatters sleep, dreams cling on with tenacious teeth. A confused reality sorting through a fragmented emotional state. Warm bed, cold toast. Sensations …
I have been raised to fear my footfalls in the dark to be a walking skirt is to sacrifice safety, sway like an open gate …
She’d had a cupcake for breakfast every day for the last month. Thick on the icing, more often than not with sprinkles, occasionally filled with …
With Lines from “The Apple Trees at Olema” by Robert Hass Shakes me by the raw, white, backlit flaring of her lightning streaked hand. Fingers …
I watched you slide swiftly into the fog encapsulating Eagle Junction railway station. Scraps of rust leaking with oil-stained dew flung into the past, and …
SKIN is the bodies first line of defense. our metal shell wrap-around sometimes, your body can confuse fortress for prison, my mother is able to …
I was born an old soul they say, a quiet spectator mulling over muddled thoughts, about what I don’t know, perhaps a previous lifetime. I …
How did the despair become fluid for clear, dry eyes to shed? Why did the burden on the heart allow the stress and cause …
Tonight the battle will begin. But first, as the concealer smooths across my eye folds, I picture her breathlessly saying hello to him, always making …
Note from the artist: Though a montage which utilized different computer programs to create the effects that photographers of not-so-old created during acid bath development, …
I never saw my mother smoke; didn’t smell her lingering breath or see her brown stained teeth; nor did I take in the stench of …
No art without startle No belief without a lie No character without an act No business without sin No coffee without a fee No culture …
A Gymnast propels through the air after launching off the springboard. Camera flashes capture blurry movements: Facebook posts for later, if She wins. Judges dress …
Do not let this be the end. Do not bisect, dissect our time with before and after, with Now …
My earliest memories involve skeletons. I remember watching The Nightmare Before Christmas with the same vague fascination that grabbed the hearts of basic goth children …
Once there was a man who found a forest in his pocket. When he came home after a day’s work he would take it out. …
Do not allow the quietness that saturates the halls of night break through the dawn. For it will shatter all perception of time …
Gracefully inept at life’s perfection gleefully disorganized and simple who put the milk in the top freezer? Sometimes I think gremlins reside here glowing and …
The peace inside the giant glass bell is almost always short-lived. Soon the translucent, riblike curves will spark with electric-blue orbs, followed by clouds of …
You come home, half gallon of milk in one hand, the other snaking around my waist. Head buried in my shoulder, no words, just small …
Once upon a time, there were two big kingdoms and two small kingdoms. The two big kingdoms were called Khakia and Doogland. The two small …
You were the ocean foams, and I was the golden grains of sand. You were the heron that flew above, and I was the salty …
They rode together in silence for some time, the old man and the young one. Paul looked out the window, his blue eyes cloudy with …
I used to pray for a wild soul risky enough to give me part of herself when she knows it is likely I will not …
The poet Charles Bukowski said “I don’t know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I …
I’ll start with what we most want you to hear: We’re still taking submissions. You’ll recall that a little over a year ago now, we …
Editor-in-Chief’s Note: Gerardeen Santiago is a poet and publisher I originally met at Glassless Minds in Oceanside. When the Metaworker staff was suggesting new people …
Every year, from the first I was assigned to the graveyard, I would watch the headstones from my place upon the highest pine tree. My …
She camouflaged herself at a darkened far table, idled away time by tapping a spoon against her drink glass; on the opposite side of …
A very pretty girl wears the same brown clogs every day sometimes. Between all the rain-soaked steps we took and the part where she left, …
We sit on the precipice of Heaven and pollution; you hand Me an empty box and promise Desultory protection. Our bodies, superimposed From two …
Obsidian, black, but when held up to light it is semi-transparent. Also known as Apache Tears. Roughly circular in shape, about half an inch by …
Yesterday you were five foot ten and today your toes don’t touch the base of the bed. You cocoon yourself deeper into the blankets, stuffing …
absent of pearls in a grand ocean mollusk crying self righteousness without salty tears seeking to find truth in an unrelenting fervor see the dark …
I only ever wrote to be close to you. You didn’t exist. I knew that. But it didn’t matter when I could create words that …
What I’m saying right now is meaningless – because a word spoken alone is a word spoken in vain. Like a tree falling in an …
Let’s make this a pissing contest. Place your bet with mine. I’m bound to win if winning means a longer yellow line. ‘Cause yellow’s the …
I opened my eyes, emerging from a dream but couldn’t remember anything at all. Shame really because I’d always considered dream space a bit like …
I don’t think in Bengali, I think it is just one of those things that fold my body the way my grandfather used to. At …
“He laid his head in my palms And I watched as he grew a garden of roses Across a dying field. He had the power …
1 My grandfather lived next to two wheat farmers. I secretly wished my grandfather was a wheat farmer. I would bicycle along the edge of …
I. I jump at the slightest touch on my cracked back. Fierce mountain wind rushes around me. My ears, too long and pointy. A cold …
Wait until your mother and brother have left the house. Then, call him. Four oh eight, five five five, seven three eight oh. You’ve had …
She reads new poetry in old settings, antique store turned coffee house, dressed in black sweater, skirt and stockings, perched on the edge of a …
Michael Schmitt is the man behind Ruthless Hippies, organizing poetry readings and music events in Encinitas and North San Diego County. I met up with …