“The Remarkable Life of a Celebrity Mountain Lioness” by Tina Plottel
“my swift nights powered by / Starbucks are behind me.”
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The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“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.”
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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.”
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Microfiction by Sharon Y. Sim
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She came out of the woods with nothing but a blanket sprayed with white and silver paint #F. J. Bergmann #TheMetaworker
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“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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“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.”
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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 …
My finger banged on the tiny doorbell. I paced back and forth trying not to fall off the tiny step. Finally, the door slowly creaked …
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 …
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 …
Nights are essays in loneliness words scrawled in the darknone to be retrieved, I stretch on the bed; disheveled like my hair,twinning with the night.My …