The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“Cleotis and I were guards at Parchman… He was a single man, a quiet kind of guy, and an exceptionally talented amateur oil painter.” excerpt from “Cleotis, The Secret Portraitist” by T. G. Metcalf #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“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
“It is raining in Boston. / My friend is in an ambulance on those wet roads” #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Our reconditioned 3D printer just made that gun,” said my boss. “The genuine ones were used by real cowboys during famous gunfights.” #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
Nate turns me toward him, my round belly the bumper between us, his brown eyes plead with me. “Everyone has evacuated. We have to go now. Please.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The bang came afterwards, as if the earth had just regained consciousness and gravity returned with violent force.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, and Mel talk with Oisín Breen about his poem “The Borderland Furies” and about his new book of poetry, Lillies on …
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 …
Episode Description: Matthew, Elena, Mel, and Cerid talk with Isabel O’Hara Walsh about her short fiction piece “In the Willow Garden”. Content Warning: We discuss …
In a house, in a heart, a demon lurked. The girl found it in her dead brother’s skull buried in the backyard. She looked into …
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 …
The boy feigns sleep, but he is ready to spring. Two children stalk his bed, dark-light-girl-boy, clad in spring-green and ochre, barefoot both. The boy …
On my sister’s 21st birthday, I visited her at the Cook County Jail. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so annoyed to see her …
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 …
(+_+)? 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 …
Sometimes I come out here to think—I’m tempted to say “about death,” but that isn’t socially acceptable, and not quite true. Not even death’s cousin, …
I am lying flat on the ground in a quiet living room in a quiet home in the kind of quiet suburb everyone’s at least …
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 …
If only Joyce hadn’t taken that damn selfie. Her and Tate, laughing at a truck stop in Mexico, drinking beer with lime, his cotton t-shirt …
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 …
Prologue to a Memoir Based on Love Letters to my Dead Husband By Margaret S. Mandell Sunday, December 10, 2017 My Dearest Love: October 2015. …
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 …
The burial begins slow, carrying up the earth over the barrow for the devils, each in turn highing their breath and turning over the gravel, …
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 …
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 …
Jerry backed the ’68 Ford Fairlane into a driveway, then jammed it into Drive, and stomped on the accelerator. The tires squealed and he crossed …
At the Senior Center, we challenge stereotypes about old ladies. We practice yogaoutdoors for “social distance.” If it starts to drizzle, we ignore it. If …
I played with the curls of your clipped auburn hair that I kept sealed in your grandma’s silver locket, because you always said I didn’t …
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 …
Down in the willow garden, where me and my true love did meet,There we sat a-courting, my love fell off to sleep – “Rose Connelly,” …
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 …
Are you dead, Maria? One Hour It seems so. Seven Days Their black clothes. Their black veils. Their white handkerchiefs, dry in their pockets. None …
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, …
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 …
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 …
Pauli stood at the railing on the back deck and flicked glances at the giant red sun fall slowly to the ground. The surrounding sky …
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 …
Through the eye of a dream,the round pit of a binocular opening,I recognize myselfstanding in front of a stranger,his gun barrel pressedagainst the bone between …
A heaviness paws at the groundsupporting the birch-wood tablewithout sound, left in the lurchwith this godforsaken mourning shroud. He lives so little, his face can …
The dull beep raises my guardas the seconds canter in the frostlit up by an anaemic starin the echoes of the morning. A glib voice …
Episode Description: Editors Matthew, Elena, Marina, and Darin talk to Kate Shannon about her wonderful poetry! We touch on the history of the form, some …
If I check my Facebookfor likes I must want to be liked but why no one who sends me wishes knows my birthday …
Perfuse mebrain scanner Push your fluidsthrough my blood vessels my tissues Let whatever in me that is at issue be scanned interior scar star-birth tumor …
Laura Becker is a visual art student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her work explores emotional and psychological contemplations through collaging and fusions of …
Our balsa-sweet Mosquito flies low and slow into the burning sun, undetectable by radarI hear only air scratching past the belly of the holdNo bomb …
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 bus climbed slowly up the gravel road,the inside all dust and sweat, smellingof leather seats, of engine oil.The travellers rubbed together, chatting,recent arrivals to …
When Emil was in Youth Brigade, his labor unit was relocated to a region called “Janesville Wisconsin.” The territory had already been processed by a …
once, mothers waited for their dead children in damp bodies untilno more noises crept from their wind-polyp’d throats, until a dozen moons passed, a skinned …
Even without a caress its petals wait, try more red than usual then sweets, sent along with the scent from the latest hillside till one …
Through a broad valley of baked brown dirt and sparse green trees,past mudbrick and stone villages of flat-topped houses, we climbthe Humvees up the mountain, …
Bob Sanders awoke one morning from a dream to discover that he no longer existed. He had died in the night. He had been fifty-eight …
Did they tell you Inferno was made from glass? Clear as truth turned upside down You can see through to the bottom of the world …
Harvey Olsen never had any interest in surviving any kind of apocalypse — not zombie, not viral, and certainly not nuclear. He honestly did not …
“through the view/of a hollow lens/like an eye surprised/by lost sight”
You pause in the center of the footbridge, a silver-bright ribbon running beneath you, gravel paths serpentine under the locust trees that define the banks …
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 …
Kill the funeral please.Mow down the mourners.Assassinate the coffin. Hey. pallbearers,hands up. don’t move.And preacher man…none of your phony speeches…heaven’s what I say it is. …
“In the dead and dark of night,/
upon a haunted gorge they rise.” #metaworkermonday
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, nonbinary individuals of all ages. It’s been a while since we had an update from the editor-in-chief, but …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
How did the despair become fluid for clear, dry eyes to shed? Why did the burden on the heart allow the stress and cause …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
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 …
Addison Namnoum and The Metaworker Editorial Staff would like to dedicate this poem to the victims of the Orlando shooting, and to their friends, families, …
