I’ve put the sign on the door for a reason: “Day sleeper, don’t ring or knock,” but the doorbell rings anyway, just when I’m dozing off. “This better be good.” […]
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I’ve put the sign on the door for a reason: “Day sleeper, don’t ring or knock,” but the doorbell rings anyway, just when I’m dozing off. “This better be good.” […]
Read moreIt’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 into her glutenous maximus. It’s […]
Read moreThe car, an older gas-powered Lincoln, rolled up smoothly, making no splash in the curbside puddle. Driver’s face (human, of course, the Others could operate few Earth machines) stared impassively […]
Read moreDetourmentiaIt began with her putting the kettle in the fridge and calling everybody ‘darling’ because shecouldn’t remember their names. Then she copied the young women’s craze for ash-blondstreaks in her […]
Read more“Older brother?” “Not now, I’m busy.” The papers shuffled make a noise like a river on a bank. “Older brother?” “What is it?” “Nothing.” Outside it is dark, and the […]
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 moreFor Devan Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and […]
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 moreThe Mother sifts through the soil, searching. Using her fingers like a sieve, she tries to find the thin filament sprouts in the mulch and dirt. She picks them out […]
Read moreThe most beautiful woman my father had ever seen, Except, he kept insisting, my mother, of course, Hailed from Grimstone, Stratton parish, in Dorset. So, I set out to find […]
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 Friends and I Started Having Premonitions About Future Lovers Sonia dreamt of being sawed in half by a mustached magician, rugged steel grinding rosewood beneath hot stage lights. Margie […]
Read moreSince our son was born, you always pull out and cum on your side. I roll onto your side of the bed, still warm and a little damp from last […]
Read moreAfternoon. Deep afternoon. Long afternoon. Too deep. Too long. Sylvie in her quilted bed. Try to sleep. Go to sleep. Quickly now! Go to sleep. Outside is all brown branches, […]
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 moreI 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 dropped your purse on the […]
Read moreVincent closed his laptop and stared at the wall. The afterglow of an Excel spreadsheet burned across his retina. He waited for it to fade away to black and realised […]
Read moreIt’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 does not feel how it looks. […]
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 moreIn the sweltering summer of 1966, I have a kitten who will not cooperate under the Arizona sun that glares at me from its cloudless sky and scorches all things […]
Read moreI am sitting on my meditation cushion, cross-legged and with eyes closed, warmed by the afternoon sun shining through the glass patio door in front of me. The sound of […]
Read moreThe more times I go back for more and find it there like a bowl of dogfood left out on the back deck by an unknown and therefore unthanked hand, […]
Read moreWhen I was in eighth grade, Dad started feeling “neither here nor there.” The harder he tried to relax, the more violently he’d jitter. The only way he could stop […]
Read moreBrittani, the unmarried maid of honor at her younger sister’s wedding in a small village church, spent years in graduate school. It infuriated her that the bride’s marriage license meant […]
Read moreI 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 my mother and all the […]
Read moreIt was late at night, and the dog was barking—that is, until she suddenly voiced a squeal that made it sound like she’d been stabbed through the paw. I emerged […]
Read moreThe man I loved as my grandfather was a tall, strong, broad-shouldered man who carried a fake ear in his back pocket. With his indigo skin and smile brighter than […]
Read moreGrievances David calls as I’m retiring for the night. “You really need to stop spoiling that dog, Mom!” he begins without preamble when I pick up. “How many more plushies […]
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 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 moreYou tell me I’m a bird. Calloused hands pinch into my ribs and lift me overhead. In your eyes, I’m soaring through the clouds like an eagle. I brace against […]
Read moreJune 1999 Bzz…Bzz…Bzz… My alarm sounds off, 2:00 a.m. A rude but expected awakening. Rolling onto my side, out of bed, I slump upright. From a pile of clothes stacked […]
Read moreThe armoire tips from out the truckbed withThe same uncertain, blind leap of a fishFlopping from a boat sole, hoping only to landSomewhere wet, to break a surface and fill […]
Read moreI piss. it feels okand then after I walkthrough the house going backto the kitchen.and you are not herein any of the house,or at least you are notin my parts […]
Read moreWhile his children bickered and his wife ignored him, Charlie tugged at the thin paper flap of a packet of tea. His eyes scanned the breakfast buffet line. If he […]
Read moreJane floats her tablecloth across the floor,sets out fruit, bread, wine, says: Here, look closely. See the red so forcefullywoven into the curtain? Mother’s blood. Scattered like burst petals across the sofa? Mother’s […]
Read moreOn the first day, the sky went out. Davis had trouble remembering what they’d been doing when the noise started. Whatever it had been, they had carried on unperturbed. When […]
Read moreYou’ve seen water towers, right? Those huge, tall jugs of water along the roadside. They’re usually a mess—washed out paint and rust, covered by graffiti, erected on the edge of […]
Read moreIn my first memory as a child, I sit naked in a garden somewhere in the Congo watching ants scutter in line. They lug the pale green carcass of a […]
Read moreEyes linger, unchanged photos thickened with dust,body-locked, estranged face gazing at the mirror,clutching at the mind, recalling memories dimly-flung,cycling again through sitcom and rerun.Bras holding the biblical fall,suspended breasts clasped […]
Read moreMy mother is already uplong retired from work, she putters aroundher house all day, buying things and giving them awaycalling friends, taking short walkskeeping herself busy in the hot heat […]
Read moreThey called me incandescent. Queens and counts, dukes and earls alike sat enthralled when I performed, swept up in a sea of notes that would swell and recede like tides. […]
Read moreFrom downstairs I hear you playfully yell “panties!” with the tantrum-bound toddler who is disemboweling my underwear drawer. By the shape of the laugh in your throat I can tell […]
Read moreWe three stare at each otherit’s Reservoir Dogs: BurgeoningDomestic Dispute Edition Our mouths trained guns,words chambered, Hello translates directly to Say something stupid, BrianAnother Hello says Let’s not do thisMy […]
Read more“Who’s Rick?” Alicia holds up a fist-sized pewter whale breaching gracefully from a block of varnished wood. Jerry looks up from where he is awkwardly packing a teapot into a […]
Read moreI clutch Dad’s oak tree leg. He reads the congregation my pre-baptism testimony. Seems myheart rejects sin, especially finger-painting my bedroom during Sunday naptime. But I’ll convertagain for another church […]
Read moreMom’s breathing was shallow, her skin rough, hair green. I glanced up and saw my father, Fred, checking his phone as his wife of almost 40 years transformed. Fred and […]
Read moreIt was official: Angie Lash and Marco Di Luca, twenty-one years her senior, were wed.
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 moreI 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, a blur of two beating […]
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 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 moreI have always wondered About the mood, Inside houses that dress themselves In yellow tungsten bulbs, Once evening descends Like children running down the stairs. Flowers of Van Gogh yellow, […]
Read moreIn the heat of the summer, back when Willow’s mother slipped in and out of lunacy, sometimes she’d wake up at night to find her sitting on the edge of […]
Read moreSKIN 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 show me exactly where the […]
Read moreI 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 woke to bird sounds in […]
Read moreYou come home, half gallon of milk in one hand, the other snaking around my waist. Head buried in my shoulder, no words, just small noises that I can feel […]
Read moreSomeone would love to have you for a daughter; Wouldn’t mind you in the attic, stealing their things. The walls would be yours, as would your body And four […]
Read moreObsidian, 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 half an inch. Received by […]
Read moreSometimes I like to reimagine religion and the stories I was told as a child, so that it fits the way I understand the world now. I tell myself it […]
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 hold the moon like a baby in my arms. If I let it go, it will fall. The light of the night will die. Out of the corner of […]
Read moreHypertension: Each bus line a grime-filled artery, Each soup line snaking concrete corners, slithering in human filth like wet soil, wet and thick and fast like noseblood; Each […]
Read moreI 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 least that’s what my mother […]
Read more1 My grandfather lived next to two wheat farmers. I secretly wished my grandfather was a wheat farmer. I would bicycle along the edge of their fields, picking stalks that […]
Read moreWait 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 the number memorized since he […]
Read moreThis one’s a very special post. We’re presenting to you the work of the highly accomplished Albanian Poet Irsa Ruçi, both translated, and in its original language. Irsa Ruçi […]
Read moreI’m always finding myself writing about fire Maybe because I always got so much to burn maybe cause I’m a fire sign it’s easy because I smell a hint of […]
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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