Dead Cake by Marlena Eva
“Dead Cake”, poetry by Marlena Eva #TheMetaworker
The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“When you ask me to sleep on the couch, / you wince. You know I know / you’ve banished others” – excerpt from Sharh on Sunan an-Nasa’i 736 by Reyzl Grace @reyzlgrace #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“The smell of trash dripping days in the sun / stains the air with its yellow gunk.” – excerpt from Parteada por el Fuego / Twice Born by E. N. Díaz #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Erik Satie and Me”, poetry by Ken Been #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“The jars near the window
Sometimes I mistake them for busts” – excerpt from Busts by Jennifer Klein @JenniferKleinReal #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Micro Poetry by Mykyta Ryzhykh #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“We chanced upon him on our honeymoon. His gallery was empty / but well-lit” – excerpt from A Secret Knowledge of How to Love by Kit Willett #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“You carried it kinda heavy though, old Johnny / confided on my last day of a 3 year gig” – excerpt from Heavy by Shaun Anthony McMichael @samcmichael #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Micro Poems by Chris Bullard #TheMetaworker MetaworkerMonday
“some chasms are wider than others / this city is large and so are the windows” excerpt from spring cleaning by @laurenkellls
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Not Done Yet”, a poem by Nancy Noelke #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“After years in the sanitarium, / the grasshopper looks up and sees / his therapist is the ant.” excerpt from Grasshopper Looks Up At His Therapist by Jocko Benoit #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“You wait for the night / below the castle on the mountain.” – Excerpt from All You Should Remember by Perry L. Powell #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
A Knight in Shining Armor for a Dad by Maxine Flam #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“the recurring colonnades /
offered the illusion / of progress, vital calamity / passed into oblivion…” excerpt from On the Plaza by Clay Waters. #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“typoem” by Michael Betancourt: a visual poem made from collaged typographic fragments. #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“In the Mood”, a poem by Lucia Owen #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Micro Poetry by David Capps #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
https://themetaworker.com/2024/01/29/micro-poetry-by-david-capps/
“Alone, he paces from room to room,/each room a cabinet of memories,/a diorama of another life.” – excerpt from The Inhabitant of the Tower by Taliesin Gore, featuring art by Cerid Jones #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Micro Poetry by Michał Zieliński #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Here’s where I was those last nights, / twisting on that rack / of a recliner next to your bed” – excerpt from “Last Nights, Dreaming” by Lucia Owen #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The beach is sinking. / It’s a sigh. It’s the lack of you and I, pulling like the tide / against its warm face.” – excerpt from “The Beach” by Daniel Brennan @dannyjbrennan #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“It’s Not You, It’s Us” and “The Procedure” – Micro Poetry by Sam Alec #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“In a cracked-pot / full of tubes, / Chlorophyll leaks / out your mouth.” from “What if our bodies were trees?” by Lucio Cooper. #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“It is raining in Boston. / My friend is in an ambulance on those wet roads” #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“At the height of my loneliness, I examine ways to escape my skin.” #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“my swift nights powered by / Starbucks are behind me.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
poetry by Russell Willis
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“There is Juan Valdez sweat and mule shit / in the bottom of my cup.” #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
She came out of the woods with nothing but a blanket sprayed with white and silver paint #F. J. Bergmann #TheMetaworker
#MetaworkerMonday
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, …
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 …
It’s part dream, part afterthought. All those years, Cupid’s arrows landed wide of the mark, struck her friends instead. And now, at last, one thumps …
her body falls out of her underwear with the impact of apples come down out of trees. it’s hot, this afternoon, baking in august. we …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 most beautiful woman my father had ever seen, Except, he kept insisting, my mother, of course, Hailed from Grimstone, Stratton parish, in Dorset. So, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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? …
“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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Hotaru ika are a glow-in-the-dark species, hiding in the translitic a mesmerizing light courtesy of a network of thousands of photophores, drifting long hairs of …
At the cake bazaar,annual in the village hall –Mrs Baker’s acid voice –I stall to scan those sweetmeat plates. The granulated cog biscuits,as if surfaced …
Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre …
A strange condition for a rowamongst the headstone rows that flankthe hill side cemetery,that hangs and flows,marble chips and chips off marble, chip paper,scree of …
Will we ever make it through the foreshore? Our erosive time is lost in this hour. Did we make the most of the coast? For …
It’s funny how franticallya few leaves appear tobe waving at me when I liftmy eyes to the maplethat tried to kill me yesterdaydropping a hefty …
His is a lariat love, beginning with a wobbleAs it starts to unwind. Then stretching fastInto a wide-spreading circle, swinging wild,Arcing high, landing without warning,Just …
What if I couldpaint like youpiercing light throughdarkening skies if I could weave storiesby blending chaptersabout love and discontent what if I stood nakedsang love …