“Roots” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi
The villages grew wingsOut of their water hyacinth-fringed backsAnd took flightTowards the heart of a hot, busy, concrete-skinned metropolis That had the hands of steel, heart …
Category: Poetry
“King Yertle” by Mickey J. Corrigan
You are a man of your wordsbut your words are all lies. Your queen is an import but the rest go in cages, you paw …
“The Green Instruction Manual” by Dr. Amit Shankar Saha
Take out a month of green from your April heart. Spread a quicksilver green on the whitewashed walls. Paint a gut-wrenching green on the palls …
“A Cut Shaving” by Joe Albanese
The shards of blanket comfort are all that remain—what framing work this is, what demeaning work this has become—begging like the hen baking bread. 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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“What Do Birds Do When Bombs Go Off” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi
When bombs rattle the insides of houses, cafes, churches, Twisting and turning their intestines, Hurling their insides out, Bleeding them dry, What do the birds …
“some other nights” by Mallika Bhaumik
Nights are essays in loneliness words scrawled in the darknone to be retrieved, I stretch on the bed; disheveled like my hair,twinning with the night.My …
“Bodily” by Gale Acuff
I don’t care if I’m dead as long as I’m still alive, in Heaven I mean though not Hell, I might be dead but I’ll …
“Forgotten Man” by Ann Christine Tabaka
Dust motes dance on sunlight streaming through a dingy window. Rusty mailbox, empty, always empty. Cadaverous cobwebs mocking back at him from a peeling wall. …
“The Clairvoyant” by DS Maolalai
for a while there I was worried I had cancer. I even joined a gym though I don’t know why I thought it would help. …
“Tungsten Bulbs” by Sayan Aich Bhowmik
I have always wondered About the mood, Inside houses that dress themselves In yellow tungsten bulbs, Once evening descends Like children running down the stairs. …
“Traumatic Pneumothorax” by Melanie Gaughran
Melanie Gaughran is a university student in the city of subdued excitement, Bellingham, Washington. Particularly concerned with her internal workings and misworkings, she finds that …
“Seasons of Earth” by Manisha Manhas
the dust storms whineagainst the windowas cherry dreamsslide inside.Searching a marigold,a child’s eyes bob tothe tunes of morningas do butterflies rise fromchrysanthemum jars.And so does the …
“Death of Whydah Sibyl” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
Stand at ocean-side, exhale screams cut through dense air, her throat tightens releasing weird screeching caterwauls. The ice melts and Sibyl climbs the tower; in gown of …
Ruben Reflects on the Difference Between Dreams and Reality While Working the Day Shift” by Chuck Von Nordheim
Where I earn my nine fifty and change each week, rules of physics make the surreal far from cheap.
“Cupholder: A Road Buddy Romance” by Chuck Von Nordheim
Under a sulfur streetlamp, your crisscrossed polymer strips that carve berths for beverages from empty air reminded me of the elastic and steel rigs worn …
“Canescent” by Jagari Mukherjee
1 These mornings, I wake to find silver threads in my hair — gleaming as if dipped in the winter moon. I have always loved …
“A Russian Romance” by Nikita Parik
One fanciful Calcutta summer the world maps were ripped off from overused geography textbooks in an act of innocent revolution. You cherry-picked ecstatic reds …
“Synthlipsis Greggii” by Hart L’Ecuyer
The war brought a boost to the flowermen’s activities, to which were added antiwar agitation among keelpods & rounding up draft dodgers. The great wave …
“Concurs” by Sanjeev Sethi
Not like in the motion pictures but we had our moments. There is no record, no pesky scribe seeking the “hows” and “whys” of it. …
“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 …
![“Game [ON]” by Henry Crawford](https://i0.wp.com/themetaworker.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/4906597504_d3d1ee9274_b.jpg?resize=890%2C530&ssl=1)
“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 …
“7820 miles” by Snata Bose
How can I forget you If your breath is on my skin, A peppermint sweet cloaked around my neck, Hair chaotic against my chest, Eyes …
“Stewed and Strained” by RK Taylor
comforting chatter from front-facing seat soothing justified cries in empathetic debate smoothing frosting onto clumping, cracked cake overflowing trashcan. No—it can wait Chemicals carve; his …
“Why I Should Probably Quit” DS Maolalai
the click of the corkscrew against the bottle and art tore up and destroyed with matches. I see poetry now full of people wearing shirts …
“A New Kind Of Love” by Sanbud Tehrani
It may not get any better Despite the that’ll-do-pig-that’ll-do condescending words of some highly carcinogenic celebrity whose comparative lifestyle may as well make them a …
“Monograph” by Gary Glauber
Home, a major chord, played to sustain. Pattern of wallpaper’s texture ingrained into décor of mind. As chorus hook plays over reminisced wonder, synapses fire …
“I Hid to Never Emerge” by Suvojit Banerjee
The snow in my lawn isn’t white. It is rusty like the color of my flowerpot. “Papa, can I go out and make a snowman?” …
“Teeter-Totter” by Sanjeev Sethi
Spindrift from your biocellate field leaves me smooth and serene, your voice hijacks my uneasiness. In the parlor of our pact flurries of foregoing …
“Exit” by Anupama Kadwad
I force myself to open the closed lids To catch a glimpse of my surroundings Try my utmost to overcome the lethargy Shake myself free …
“Red Wine for Winter” by DS Maolalai
the snow melts grey into late december and mean music is making a sudden comeback in the bars saxophones and tatters of rattled live drumming …
“Modern Sunsets” by M. A. Istvan Jr.
daytime gutter vomit scared to change your way from one that has been making you money color-segregated schools for the blind the increasing pressure to …
“Pledge” by Sheikha A.
Some lands are royalty in just existence: the dragging of the boat from sand to sea, the thick of the tongue on the roof of …
“This is not a Democracy!” by Sanbud Tehrani
“This is not a Democracy!” More equals loss… Fight like this great and disgusting world is laughing at us. We let this happen, we march …
“Cold Frame” by Sanjeev Sethi
Love like Eucalyptus or Lavender was sabuline. Cacoethes for your company I understand now: the arenosity I had to encounter by cholla-like jabs too. …
“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 …
“untitled” by Darin Milanesio
Life is supposed to be music But we are the notes not the listeners Maybe we are God’s music Chords being strummed on some cosmic …
“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? …
A poem from Simon Perchik
Editor’s Note: Per the author’s request, we have left this piece untitled. * These crumbs are from so many places yet after every meal they …
Excerpt From “We Three Kings” by D.M. Rice
D.M. Rice is a non-binary writer from Dallas, TX whose work has been featured in the Aletheia Journal, Sybil, The Bandit Zine, and the anthologies Rec*og*nize, Nameless …
“Occupy the Present” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
Whatever be the season, perhaps you are the reason, for the shadowed man whom limps down the narrow lane. With help of a burled cane, …
“Stag” by Megan Denese Mealor
Megan Denese Mealor has been published widely in numerous journal, most recently Children Churched & Daddies, Beakful, streetcake, and Harbinger Asylum. A two-time Pushcart Prize …
“Four Teacups” by Irtika Kazi
Four tea cups lay unattended since Mittag – on the black, bedraggled table in the canteen. You and I – drinking each other in— …
“The Clues Within an Adirondack Glade: Son to Father” by Greg Lucas
Now that you’ve passed-through woods deeper and darker than these — climbed into eternity — can you tell me, when our hearts stop, and we’re …
“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 …
“To Know Life, To Fight Unarmed” by Sarah Kersey
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 …
“Half-Dream” by Ann Christine Tabaka
Gilded morning shatters sleep, dreams cling on with tenacious teeth. A confused reality sorting through a fragmented emotional state. Warm bed, cold toast. Sensations …
“Night” by Chestina Craig
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 …
Mother Rips my Roots by Jasmine King
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 …
“He Stared Down the Barrel of a Gun and He Saw Me” by Stephanie Luka
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” by Chestina Craig
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 …
“The Plum Tree” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
How did the despair become fluid for clear, dry eyes to shed? Why did the burden on the heart allow the stress and cause …
“War Paint” by Linda Imbler
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 …
“Old Photos” by Pat St. Pierre
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 …
“Lexical Proverbs Newly Discovered” by Yuan Changming
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 …
“Soft Dismount” by Matt Gillick
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 …
“Eight Hour Sunder” by Edward Hemstreet
Do not let this be the end. Do not bisect, dissect our time with before and after, with Now …
“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 …
“Beware of the Quiet” by Ann Christine Tabaka
Do not allow the quietness that saturates the halls of night break through the dawn. For it will shatter all perception of time …
“Oh, What the Hell” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“You and I” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi
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 …
“No Room in the Rubble” by Khalid Abu Dawas
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 …
“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 …
“The Couple Almost” by John Grey
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 blason from the crossfaded” by Connor Chapman
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, …
“To the Best” by Anna Keeler
We sit on the precipice of Heaven and pollution; you hand Me an empty box and promise Desultory protection. Our bodies, superimposed From two …
“Twilight’s Crescendo” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“Word Supreme” by Clint Keller
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 …
“The Pissing Contest” by Laurie Frisbey
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 …