The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“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
“He on one end, she on the other, they march with purpose to the orchid show. The children between them are bundled so tightly, they waddle like penguins in the winter glow.” – excerpt from The Bronx Botanical Gardens Orchid Show by Jacqueline S. McCauley #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“Like the Man, she appeared oblivious to the absence of walls. Standing in my usual spot observing the house, I kept willing [the Woman] to look my way.” – excerpt from The Season of Solitude by Jenn Haase Vetter #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“my swift nights powered by / Starbucks are behind me.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“I stand at the corner hailing autorickshaws. Many are ferrying schoolchildren, plastic sacks full of produce, five-litre gas cylinders, or the drivers’ wives holding stacked egg-trays bound for grocers.”
#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
Microfiction by Sharon Y. Sim
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
She came out of the woods with nothing but a blanket sprayed with white and silver paint #F. J. Bergmann #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
Episode 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 …
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.
I want to scream until my voice blistersAround the hot cinders of the words I spitI burn out next to the Sun and SisterWhere my …
Trigger Warning: sexual themes and abuse In my career as a sex worker, I accept gifts with poise and grace. It’s an odd twist in …
I 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 …
My Friends and I Started Having Premonitions About Future Lovers Sonia dreamt of being sawed in half by a mustached magician, rugged steel grinding rosewood …
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 …
I 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 …
Emerging writer Zoë Blaylock was educated in the school of hard knocks and droll encounters but credentialed by Harvard. She works in research/healthcare ethics in …
If 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 …
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. …
Rona 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 …
night falls like a brick. urgent tongue of wind stuck to the back of my neck, hair wrapped around my throat. fist of keys in …
I was afraid of my abusive and controlling ex-husband, but I didn’t know this until 10 years after I divorced him. I wrote hidden poems, …
When in a supermarket in a town not your own do not start screaming “Where are the olives? Where are the fucking olives?” as you …
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 …
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 …
I 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 …
At fifteen Anne bought her first action figure—Wonder Woman. When she saw her on television in her blue starry shorts, legs rising out of red …
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 …
At the Senior Center, we challenge stereotypes about old ladies. We practice yogaoutdoors for “social distance.” If it starts to drizzle, we ignore it. If …
without askingearthquakes rumbled to announce thearrival of mountains rivers roared to forewarn rocksof their ravage winds howled to demand fishermenback to shore wildfires raged to …
When 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 …
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,” …
James was a senior when I was a freshman at Salem North High School; I fell in love with him when I heard he’d persuaded …
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, …
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 …
“And I learned, gentlemen. Alas, one learns when one has to. One learns when one wants a way out. One learns ruthlessly.” —Franz Kafka, “A …
Becca add morebutter Becca. That’s no way tomake a roux. Don’t just measure on a whim.Your flour and fat. Or fluid and fault.Meat drippings, maybe. …
There is no chirping from gulls, no chatter back and forth,No songs at sunrise or ushering in night. No lonely callsFor a lover to echo …
June 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 …
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 …
That motherlode of Sun right thereliterally blasting me in the face with its gloryit’s so far away (1 au, to be exact), but all this …
I. Snapshot Click. WHIRR. Shadowed still frame capturing fae.Ethereal grace magnified by child’s wonder.Muted only by adults’ misunderstanding “genuine.”Why would fae be less real if …
Mary Paulson currently lives and works in Naples, FL. Her poems have appeared in Slow Trains, Mainstreet Rag, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Arkana, Thimble …
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 …
everything smells like soap except that one hallway smeared withvolatile coconut particles, reminds me of that porn theatre in somedank Indianapolis district wild with heavy …
I can’t sleep. Deep breath in. Boredom has hit me like a speck of bird poop that I can’t shake off. I’m doing that thing …
I.As snow settles upon the landand brings with it crisp, frozen air,I’ll hear the cardinal’s jarring callas it echoes in my anxious mind. The cold …
Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer’s daughter from the American Midwest, began writing poetry after her retirement from IT work in 2017. She loves hiking, gravel-travel …
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 …
They called me incandescent. Queens and counts, dukes and earls alike sat enthralled when I performed, swept up in a sea of notes that would …
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, …
Our 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 …
We have always lived within these walls,this gleaming, shining castle on a hill,a beacon held aloft for one and allto marvel at, imagining the thrill …
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 …
Seven 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 …
A fire sunset facing her, thunder didn’t show, how much she even wished for this sky to hurt, to rive in two, boiling the river …
Julie stared at the cardinal laying in the snow outside her living room window. It was like fresh crimson on white porcelain tile which made …
A grey afternoon and when itcontinues to rain, a clueless patternleaves pools on our balcony, tearson the skylight.By now we knew who we are and …
Before their house was built, Jan and Stan spent hours staring at the blueprints, hunting for a 90-degree angle. Their architect told them the construction …
She’s even made the bed where another man will rape her. The swine have been slaughtered, the silver’s been laid. Everything’s ready. She scans the …
I didn’t always know I was a woman. That’s one of the myths – that every trans person knows it from Day One. I guess …
i.other things live easy, you knowI suppose I, too, live easy in some ways.a domination of oceans gatheringa braying of old bones, dust and then …
I 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 …
The sunlight that crawls between hydrangea leaveswhile moss roses stretch and mouse through cracks in the stairs Neighbors who share their sweet ouzowith stories about …
Floating, ghost horse wakes in a fieldExactly like his own, just that he can’t touchThe soft weeds crawling up the fence.At first, he shivers into …
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 …
Privacy. Who doesn’t want privacy? Even if you’ve sold off half your property to a persistent developer intending to put up twenty “McMansions” on it, …
It was the days where the night would not come, for the sun held the sky hostage just by a look. It was the tyrannical …
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 …
Did they tell you Inferno was made from glass? Clear as truth turned upside down You can see through to the bottom of the world …
Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue, They ask me which colour you are And laugh when I cannot answer. Could I lie you …
Kurt wouldn’t eat yellow rice. Hedidn’t like that exotic food. Henarrated our trip to Iowa onesummer, had a story for every exit onevery road, tooth-whistling …
We arrived right on time, although we had debated that. Isn’t fashionably late, well, fashionable? In the end, though, we were on time. Which was …
The destiny tree, Dark gnarled and secretly wick, Claws at you and me Across eye spaces Twisting phoenix-glass specks prance Bloated toad-faces Yearning for their …
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) about three years ago. I didn’t know much about the game and approached it as something new to …
James, as the doctors and staff at St. Mark’s Regional Hospital in San Diego insisted on calling him, applied pancake make-up over the band-aid camouflaging …
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. …
When my ear fell off I first thought of the client delegation sitting at the conference room, waiting for the meeting to begin in earnest. …
Dopo mezzanotte! Dopo, dopo! The door pops open, out of the dust the ocean unfolds under the ropewalker’s high gloss black shoes. He floats among …
She 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 …
“Time is an illusion.” – Hue, from Avatar: The Last Airbender, “The Swamp” I don’t know about you, but I feel like the days this …
There used to be an edge where the world ended, where ships would tumult down cataracts into nothingness. There are places still, buffers and hallows …
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 …
There’s no getting around the fact that this has been a very unusual month. Here in the States, we’re facing the first impacts of COVID-19, …
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 …
Why do we write? I’ve been asking myself that lately because it’s been tough to find the motivation to do it. It’s not that I …
Sure, no one ever said that people were getting their powers from the rain. Tommy guessed it had something to do with all those big …
The small pink tube is pressed into the palm of my right hand. I am flicking the lid with my thumb, finding satisfaction in the …
I’ve been a sellout since I was twenty-two, technically. That was the year I turned a seasonal copywriting job in the fashion industry into a …
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 …
The house across from mehas caught aflameand taken it against water The firemen are comingtheir trucks yelling attheir speed. They are dressedin their shieldsand are …
Then the Billado Block burned down, and I had nowhere to live. “Well, shit,” I said to the guy standing next to me watching it …
I sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried …
