The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“Your gaze was fixed on something in the front, not on any person or any seat or fixture in the bus, but probably on a ghost that only you could see.” – excerpt from December Rain by Subarna Mohanty #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“I used to think that love was a kind of violence… Because tonight I’m hooked on you like a knife caught in my throat.” – excerpt from Suckers by Campbell Brown @p0cketwatch3s #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“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
“I will always return the books you lend me because I know they are important.” – excerpt from Unknown Author, fiction by Paul Rabinowitz #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“I trace your name in morning shadows.” – excerpt from “Your Scent”, micro fiction by Erin Jamieson @erin_simmer #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“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
Micro Poems by Chris Bullard #TheMetaworker MetaworkerMonday
“I longed to brush my lips next to yours– to taste the tang of rubies on your tongue.” excerpt from Rubies by Carol E. Anderson #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Where shall they meet? The deli, let’s say. Maybe she works behind the counter. Maybe he comes in for a sandwich.” – excerpt from Recipe by Annie Borelli #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“In the Mood”, a poem by Lucia Owen #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
“Your autumn red curls, wrapped in Nigerian print, crowned your head like royalty. Africa hung from your earlobes, swayed in pride.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“He told me how the image of that clear cold gin sliding past my red lips and down my throat had driven him nearly mad with desire.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
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 …
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 …
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 …
Vincent closed his laptop and stared at the wall. The afterglow of an Excel spreadsheet burned across his retina. He waited for it to fade …
The Art Gallery I pop into the art gallery lined with textured paintings of the seaside. The artist greets me as she works wielding a …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Two a.m., well into her night shift at the NICU, was never a good time to receive a call on her cell. “He’s gone,” Jason’s …
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 …
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,” …
The 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 …
Grievances 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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
Amber, scarlet, gilded daffodil. All sits quiet, calm,and the sun sets as I turn to you. It takes a second but then I see a …
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, and Melissa talk to Veronica Lupinacci about her wonderful poem, Kurt. We talk about nonfiction, how we remember people, and the …
Maya’s entire town had awoken one morning to find swarms of people milling outside their doors, their skins a mottled mix of colors: sunny yellows, …
I In an old cafe on Frenchmen Street in The Faubourg Marigny, a ceiling fan churns, throwing dust into the eyes of an old painting …
Chaos sings, we areDisintegrating whole, drunkWith the city’s disillusionmentHalf and half and nowhere reallysick sipping stars, picking dirt off soles unmet; yet to birth new …
Out of respect I acknowledge you’re a speck on a papered wall in the midst of a tornado. You’re expected to show your worth, follow …
We are all doomed to lose everything. I’ve lost three fingers, one arm, one eye. I’ve lost my family, my childhood home, my native tongue. …
It was official: Angie Lash and Marco Di Luca, twenty-one years her senior, were wed.
somewhere up here you might bite the whole horizon. love pours in like an emptied sack of apples. tastes fresh like apples, and smells like …
Connie Woodring is a 75-year-old retired psychotherapist/educator/social activist who is getting back to her true love of writing after 45 years in her real job. …
A pair of purple-throated pigeons entwine atop a post as our train passes by. Their beaks lock beneath unblinking black eyes. Breeze passes over the …
I’ve fallen in love with all of them. How could I not? With their skin so soft I can watch it give way beneath my …
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 …
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 …
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 …
I knew already, struck with the phantasm of a dream that I had taken the reins of my life at last. Like a drowning man …
everyday I am born like this – nothing ever happens for the first time I collect my shattered promises and get back home to my …
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 …
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 …
The rain cut me a river wide enough to savour my numbered gardens— each with their own cloud. And in each I bred a different …
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 …
Spindrift from your biocellate field leaves me smooth and serene, your voice hijacks my uneasiness. In the parlor of our pact flurries of foregoing …
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. …
She’d had a cupcake for breakfast every day for the last month. Thick on the icing, more often than not with sprinkles, occasionally filled with …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
A blank is waiting to get painted, a bank shimmers with slimes and silt. I have waited for you; liquid caresses, and the kisses of …
Wait 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 …
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, …
I don’t want that smart bomb sort of love, that painless thing all beset with clang of rust knife, mouse click, screen swipe, before you …
Diamond shimmers within sand, an ardor in the moon’s brightness; a whisper. Stealing of devoted memories cast one’s heart off into eternity; the promissory. Talking …
Torrin Greathouse is a Literary Journalism student and governing member of the Uncultivated Rabbits spoken word collective at UC Irvine. They were the 2015 winner …
My room is black as an Olympic runner—except for the illuminated screen of my Sony Vaio which radiates like Chernobyl. My laptop is cherry red; …
They Sleek bold bodybound by expectationsby gendered declarationsforced to function in conversationssplit in twain by ‘his’ + ‘her’, no ‘they’ How to navigate this intimate …
