The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“The truth is, after twenty-four years of marriage, six kids and two extramarital affairs, Marilyn had had enough. She decided… she’d run away.” – excerpt from Be Prepared To Modify Your Plan. by Brenda Kilianski #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Mabel brewed the raspberry leaves and you marvelled at how the tea drove away the ache. She smiled and winked before sending you back to bed with a hug and a promise.” – excerpt from by Julia S. Maron @juliasjmaron #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Microfiction by F.D. Jackson #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Sheep are floating in the ocean, and I’m going to be sick again. Not that those two have much to do with each other.” – excerpt from Porcelain Sheep by Jamie Anthony Louis @jamieanthony187 #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
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
I asked about her yearnings, her desires, as I suspected they might, perhaps, mesh with my own. It was worth a try, an attempt at some sort of shared, miraculous
camaraderie.
The Mother sifts through the soil, searching. Using her fingers like a sieve, she tries to find the thin filament sprouts in the mulch and …
It’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 …
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 …
In the sweltering summer of 1966, I have a kitten who will not cooperate under the Arizona sun that glares at me from its cloudless …
Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre …
Jane 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 …
Eyes 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 …
My mother is already uplong retired from work, she putters aroundher house all day, buying things and giving them awaycalling friends, taking short walkskeeping herself …
From 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 …
Mom’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 …
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 …
My self-destruct button pops up. It sits idle with flirt and temptation, just atop my ribs. Throbs with each perfectly pained thump of my heart. …
Oisín Breen is a 35 year-old poet, part time academic in narratological complexity, and a financial journalist covering the US registered investment advisory sector. Dublin …
I have stood for over a hundred years in this place, endured the idiots who link hands and try to encompass my bulk, observed the …
Soft as buckskin and long as a train’s whistle, mourning dove calls drift down the summer afternoon, signaling the coming evening coolness. I listen hard …
The air is thick with a bovine stench. We’re driving eight hundred miles through desert and oil fields to our new home on Dyess Air …
In 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 …
With Lines from “The Apple Trees at Olema” by Robert Hass Shakes me by the raw, white, backlit flaring of her lightning streaked hand. Fingers …
I never saw my mother smoke; didn’t smell her lingering breath or see her brown stained teeth; nor did I take in the stench of …
You come home, half gallon of milk in one hand, the other snaking around my waist. Head buried in my shoulder, no words, just small …
I ask carbon, what does it feel like to be backbone? To have multiple arms? To be mother to all of me. Mother to all …
