“Your autumn red curls, wrapped in Nigerian print, crowned your head like royalty. Africa hung from your earlobes, swayed in pride.”
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Tag: love
“Game of Interludes” by Patricia Ann Bowen
“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
“Emma Marries for the First Time at 54” by John Grey
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 into her glutenous maximus. It’s […]
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“Function” by DS Maolalai
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 are out on the balcony […]
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“Blowing Out Candles” by Daniel Romo
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 Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and […]
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“Misplaced Affections” by Sinclaire Dickinson
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 go unsaidtells you she’s consolidating […]
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“Fireworks” by T.K. Howell
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 away to black and realised […]
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Microfiction by Jennifer Novotney
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 palette knife through thick clumps […]
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“Another Life” by Helen Nancy Meneilly
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 Writing through the Open University. […]
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“Alligators to Ashes” by Margaret S Mandell
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. I am swimming laps alone […]
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Four Haikus by Constance Mello
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 Coke kind of Love. I […]
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“I’ve Barely Been to College” by Kailey Tucker
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 crumbled yellow bladed leaves that change […]
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“Rare” by Joanne Howard
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 slurred words garbled on the […]
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“Scrutiny” by Tim Frank
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 truly see you. But I […]
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“In the Willow Garden” by Isabel O’Hara Walsh
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,” traditional Appalachian ballad I hear […]
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“Abracadabra” by Christina Marable
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 skin and smile brighter than […]
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Microfiction by Megha Nayar
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 up. “How many more plushies […]
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“In Between” by Kelly Claytor
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 linger at my grave. No […]
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“Before” by Margaret Krusinga
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, in 1977. Poetry has become […]
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“Lookalike” by Cameron Morse
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 javelinjust a couple feet frommy […]
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“Tethered” by Sarette Danae
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 a thump and a cinch. […]
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“The Wish” by Paul Rabinowitz
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 songsthat pry hearts openlike the […]
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“Tenderness” by Mary Paulson
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 my breasts. We’re in a […]
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“The Sands of Time” by Rebecca Johnson
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 granuleof sand that chips away, […]
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“Avril” by Hadley-James Hoyles
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 asserts itselfinto my tame fantasy:-Not […]
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The Metaworker Podcast – Kurt by Veronicca Lupinacci
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 general topic of learning to […]
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“Rangoli Man” by Mina Rozario
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, rich crimsons, deep blues, and […]
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“Little Gem Magnolia” by Paul Rabinowitz
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 of Madame Rose Nicaud. A […]
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“Pour toi, mon amour” by Tasnia Nahla
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 fire –mere – the thoughts […]
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“Ode to a Speck” by Thomas Piekarski
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 directives they demand. While others […]
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“These fragments I have shored against my ruins” by Jie Wang
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. I’m getting better and better […]
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“A Bride” by Michael Howard
It was official: Angie Lash and Marco Di Luca, twenty-one years her senior, were wed.
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“Horseshoes.” by DS Maolalai
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 apples too. I am on […]
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“Typical Spring Love Song” by Connie Woodring
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. She has a B.A.in English […]
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“Locked Together” by C.D. Panell
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 feathers on their necks as […]
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“Cattail Confessions” by Hannah Melin
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 fingerprints like silt at the […]
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“Advice for Young Lovers” by Thom Young
“try hate later on” #MetaworkerMonday
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“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 blue arteries, they weavenarratives of […]
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“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 may not accomplish may your […]
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“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 unknown,remote like the rugged terrains […]
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“The cops have Julia” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
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 finding the hole in the […]
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“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 frailty the neon sign does […]
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“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 as dreamy where my Eden […]
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“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 and very tight jeans to […]
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“The God of Good Things” by Snata Bose
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 flower— a single rose: blood […]
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“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 three-eyed telepathic Venusian with ten […]
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“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 circuits miss their bourn. In […]
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“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. Nursery a green-thumber creates when […]
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“Icing” by Melissa Bobe
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 sweet cream or more icing. […]
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“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 air that your wings collided […]
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“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 come back when she knows […]
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“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, she joked, “These are my […]
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“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 now. I tell myself it […]
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“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 empty forest, I may as […]
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“Water” by Gabby Catalano
“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 […]
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“The Soul is Water” by Sudeep Adhikari
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 ether, and fires of cloud. […]
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“Blood Orange Soda” by Maya Rahman-Rios
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 the number memorized since he […]
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“This is not a Political Poem” by Addison Namnoum
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, and lovers. This is a […]
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“On Fainting in Tube Stations” by Carter Vance
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 meet to touch. I wish […]
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“Shimmers of Time” by Ken Allan Dronsfield
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 of love and deep passions, […]
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“Blossom” by Torrin Greathous
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 of the Orange County Poetry […]
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“Catfish” by Amethyst Hope Hethcoat
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; vibrant and bold and sophisticated, […]
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“They” and “The Mountain Where our Bones Showed Through” by Jesse Swire
They Sleek bold body bound by expectations by gendered declarations forced to function in conversations split in twain by ‘his’ + ‘her’, no ‘they’ How to navigate this intimate space […]
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