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 Deathbed of Étaín, published […]
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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 Deathbed of Étaín, published […]
Read moreThe 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 spreads across the horizon. I […]
Read moreEpisode 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 victims of trauma and abuse […]
Read moreIn 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 its hollow sockets and thought […]
Read moreTomorrow 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 afuneral bread. Toleave me hungry. […]
Read moreThe 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 watches from under hooded eyelids, […]
Read moreOn 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 there. If only I had […]
Read moreYou 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 at bottom’s black. You and […]
Read more(+_+)? 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 hard I cried<3 I’m so […]
Read moreSometimes 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, but there is a resemblance. […]
Read moreI 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 driven through, if not lived […]
Read moreMy mother sayslife is goodshe is happydown sixmaybe seven —- no, eight poundssince catching upto her too-thin sisterwho is losing weight to chemofastand I want to say somethingbut I don’tstop […]
Read moreIf 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 sticky with sweat, her tank […]
Read moreHelen Nancy Meneilly is an Irish poet whose work explores issues of identity, language, and womanhood. She is currently studying for her MA in Creative Writing through the Open University. […]
Read morePrologue to a Memoir Based on Love Letters to my Dead Husband By Margaret S. Mandell Sunday, December 10, 2017 My Dearest Love: October 2015. I am swimming laps alone […]
Read moreRona 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 cooked rice. I steal furtive […]
Read moreThe burial begins slow, carrying up the earth over the barrow for the devils, each in turn highing their breath and turning over the gravel, staring down into the ditch […]
Read morenight falls like a brick. urgent tongue of wind stuck to the back of my neck, hair wrapped around my throat. fist of keys in my coat pocket. wraiths of […]
Read moreAsh Evan Lippert is a clay artist and emerging queer poet residing in the South Carolina upstate. Their poetry and fiction center on the exploration of liminal states of consciousness, […]
Read moreJerry backed the ’68 Ford Fairlane into a driveway, then jammed it into Drive, and stomped on the accelerator. The tires squealed and he crossed the road, went up a […]
Read moreAt the Senior Center, we challenge stereotypes about old ladies. We practice yogaoutdoors for “social distance.” If it starts to drizzle, we ignore it. If it pours, we run for […]
Read moreI 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 truly see you. But I […]
Read moreWhen 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 see it all again(later, someday, […]
Read moreDown 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,” traditional Appalachian ballad I hear […]
Read moreThere was a lot of crazy thrashing at first and I was cursing myself for not keeping at it with those swimming lessons, and I had unkind words for the […]
Read moreAre you dead, Maria? One Hour It seems so. Seven Days Their black clothes. Their black veils. Their white handkerchiefs, dry in their pockets. None linger at my grave. No […]
Read moreMargaret Krusinga lives on sixty acres she and her husband manage loosely for wildlife. Diagnosed with MS in 1976, she graduated college under a cloud, in 1977. Poetry has become […]
Read moreHotaru 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 wild woman situated over […]
Read moreA 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 lager cans and driven flowers;sunlight […]
Read morePauli stood at the railing on the back deck and flicked glances at the giant red sun fall slowly to the ground. The surrounding sky was a uniform hazy gray […]
Read moreIt’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 javelinjust a couple feet frommy […]
Read moreThrough 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 my breasts. We’re in a […]
Read moreA 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 matchthe umbra where the light […]
Read moreThe dull beep raises my guardas the seconds canter in the frostlit up by an anaemic starin the echoes of the morning. A glib voice asserts itselfinto my tame fantasy:-Not […]
Read moreEpisode Description: Editors Matthew, Elena, Marina, and Darin talk to Kate Shannon about her wonderful poetry! We touch on the history of the form, some of the brutal inspirations that […]
Read moreIf I check my Facebookfor likes I must want to be liked but why no one who sends me wishes knows my birthday * Would […]
Read morePerfuse 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 […]
Read moreLaura Becker is a visual art student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her work explores emotional and psychological contemplations through collaging and fusions of color, abstraction, and psychedelia. Find […]
Read moreOur 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 today, just a tired man […]
Read moreSeven 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 really plankton because we needed […]
Read moreThe 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 the peninsula,sharing stories from past […]
Read moreWhen Emil was in Youth Brigade, his labor unit was relocated to a region called “Janesville Wisconsin.” The territory had already been processed by a dozen salvage teams and Emil’s […]
Read moreonce, 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 and rising tidethat never overtakes […]
Read moreEven without a caress its petals wait, try more red than usual then sweets, sent along with the scent from the latest hillside till one grave blossoms before the others […]
Read moreThrough 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, over the quickly shrinking road […]
Read moreBob 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 years old when he died. […]
Read moreDid they tell you Inferno was made from glass? Clear as truth turned upside down You can see through to the bottom of the world An everywhere that exists below […]
Read moreHarvey Olsen never had any interest in surviving any kind of apocalypse — not zombie, not viral, and certainly not nuclear. He honestly did not understand those who did. All […]
Read more“through the view/of a hollow lens/like an eye surprised/by lost sight”
Read moreYou 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 of the creek. The sun […]
Read moreShe 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 knighted, unable to cry out […]
Read moreKill 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. Don’t you know how muchI […]
Read more“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 I’m out of work for […]
Read moreHaving 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 anything surprising or contentious. He […]
Read moreI sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried soul […]
Read moreWhen bombs rattle the insides of houses, cafes, churches, Twisting and turning their intestines, Hurling their insides out, Bleeding them dry, What do the birds do? Other than shooting out […]
Read moreI 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 still be lively, just somewhere […]
Read moreDust motes dance on sunlight streaming through a dingy window. Rusty mailbox, empty, always empty. Cadaverous cobwebs mocking back at him from a peeling wall. He sits alone in his […]
Read moreStand 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 white with gold lace; coat-less, […]
Read moreCome 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 the nearer part of it, […]
Read moreI force myself to open the closed lids To catch a glimpse of my surroundings Try my utmost to overcome the lethargy Shake myself free of the stupor Tiredness which […]
Read moreI 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 in the faint glinting of […]
Read moreHow did the despair become fluid for clear, dry eyes to shed? Why did the burden on the heart allow the stress and cause the beat to finally stop […]
Read moreEvery year, from the first I was assigned to the graveyard, I would watch the headstones from my place upon the highest pine tree. My job was to make sure […]
Read moreI 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 would conjure you. And someday, […]
Read moreThe letter I wrote Lilly first thing after I found out talks to her in the present tense, like she still exists, because she does still exist for me, or […]
Read moreI 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 going to the cinema without […]
Read more“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 to entrap me in flesh […]
Read moreI. I jump at the slightest touch on my cracked back. Fierce mountain wind rushes around me. My ears, too long and pointy. A cold hand on my forehead makes […]
Read moreAddison Namnoum and The Metaworker Editorial Staff would like to dedicate this poem to the victims of the Orlando shooting, and to their friends, families, and lovers. This is a […]
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