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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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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 where the edges become light, […]
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Sam Karrington’s size-six loafers kicked back and forth atop the wooden bench under the train stop awning. The train would be here soon, he thought—no need to get too comfortable. […]
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The cracks of frost in the whitened planksspell the end of one season and the slow plunge into the next.By the black pond, the danceof insects grows sparse.The reflections of […]
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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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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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My poor dear, were tight plastic ties placed on your tender wrists? Were you marched down a long dim hall to the room “Philosophy 101”? Told to lie on a […]
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Kill the funeral please.Mow down the mourners.Assassinate the coffin. Hey. pallbearers,hands up. don’t move.And preacher man…none of your phony speeches…heaven’s what I say it is. Don’t you know how muchI […]
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Honey’s Pub is loud with live music, and there’s a full pint of lager in front of me. If I drink it, it’ll be my first in seven years. I […]
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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 overprepared hiker complete with stuffed […]
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There is something sad about an unfrosted and forgotten about sheet cake — the kind of sheet cake when if finished would be eaten at the office and in celebration […]
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[Shot] [in a single take] [with no lighting] [and no sound] [some believed] [The Black Movie] [would fail] [at the box office] [when it opened] [a confused] [audience] [sat in […]
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One lost Saturday night, around the last rays of the summer that never was, Yoshimi and William-James, one of the finer couples in their little town of exiles, invited Morrison […]
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The darkness should be the first clue, like it was not just a memory but an encounter, both in past and present: of the future. Or some thing who remembers […]
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Peg had made good on her resolution to leave West Virginia, and here he was in San Francisco, seasonless though it was Spring, sleeping on her new couch when what […]
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A four-engine train engines idling diesel beside the iron fence mist herds of penned-in cattle earthen clouds settling low a rider crooning Huddie Ledbetter Goodnight Irene. His thoughts were refuge […]
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The Devil’s wicked lips taste my burning flesh A delicacy A flame with delight (with shame) He teases, waiting, enticing, watching as I squirm and writhe, (wanting to escape) wanting […]
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She shone bright in the headlights of Emerson’s car. White dress, white shoes, white ribbon in her hair. A very white little girl walking along the railroad tracks, going slow […]
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Brett Stout is a 40-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates mostly controversial work usually while […]
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The villages grew wingsOut of their water hyacinth-fringed backsAnd took flightTowards the heart of a hot, busy, concrete-skinned metropolis That had the hands of steel, heart of iron, teeth of gravel. […]
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You are a man of your wordsbut your words are all lies. Your queen is an import but the rest go in cages, you paw them freelythrough iron bars. You […]
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Take out a month of green from your April heart. Spread a quicksilver green on the whitewashed walls. Paint a gut-wrenching green on the palls of spring. Smear a vermillion […]
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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 companies that owned the factories […]
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The shards of blanket comfort are all that remain—what framing work this is, what demeaning work this has become—begging like the hen baking bread. A subaltern on the verge of […]
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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 incessant beat of the lever […]
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Brett Stout is a 40-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates mostly controversial work usually while […]
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“How d’ya s’ppose we git outta this here situation?” “Well, the cars are over there.” “Sure are.” “That’s probably our best bet out of here.” “’Cept how we gonna git […]
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In the dream, I’m falling. I tell you I’m falling. One arm hooked onto the ice shelf, the other wrapped about my boy, I fall into the dark Arctic river. […]
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“try hate later on” #MetaworkerMonday
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“as I hunch in gnarly leather, drool, toothless,” #metaworkermonday
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The summer after my first year of college the KKK had a presence on Main Street in my hometown for a few hours. Don’t know what they wanted—just walking up […]
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“In the dead and dark of night,/
upon a haunted gorge they rise.” #metaworkermonday
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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We go grocery shopping with a pregnant woman who does and does not want the Hawaii rolls, a woman who drops the cockroach in a salsa jar full of bleach, […]
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The longing of the round peg to become squareto belong to the holeand that of the piece of the jigsaw puzzleto be fitted into make it wholeare different from that ofthe […]
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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 and try to see what […]
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I sit and I stare, trying to peerinto the back of my beautiful sons’ eyesbecause I am looking for somethingthat I soon begin to realize,I may not be quite ready […]
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I freeze, startled by the sudden flight of a mud swallow against the backdrop of a tilt-up building, swarm of chirping notes I cannot decipher, a blur of two beating […]
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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 ready to huntthe guiltleft by […]
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When it was the fashionI too measured out my life in coffee spoons It was not only to youthat some things made no sensebut to me tooFor you it was […]
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It was the kind of bar that would have had to struggle up several rungs of the social ladder to be considered a dive. Not that the clientele of “The […]
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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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It wasn’t like that. Our mother suckled us for years in the rank, familiar den. She chewed the deer meat until it was a fine paste she could drop into […]
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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 burn, “what am I supposed […]
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I exist where you’ve kicked me Your boot rings the bell Cracks the shell Invites Hell’s inverted Sisters to rent a storefront At the bruise’s edge They bring me […]
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It was just beneath the nipple of her heaving right breast. “What’s that?” asked Bordelli. Clarice didn’t seem to hear him. She kept bucking her hips and tightening her leg […]
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Having little to his name when he died, the reading of Henry Fromm’s will went quickly. Nothing surprising or contentious. On paper he never did anything surprising or contentious. He […]
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To view this content, you must be a member of The Metaworker’s Patreon at $5 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
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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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There’s a man the silent world claims as Noah, standing at the cliff’s edge, looking down on us as we crawl across each other, his measurements already taken, the wood […]
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I guess I never told you about Texas, long and sweet in the evening, boiling jelly, about mom’s temperature, stuck in the oven: The best and worst part of the […]
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I fold the corners Of a very desperate sky. The stars I had to throw away, On highways that know Where they are going. With the attention of a last […]
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When bombs rattle the insides of houses, cafes, churches, Twisting and turning their intestines, Hurling their insides out, Bleeding them dry, What do the birds do? Other than shooting out […]
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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 flesh sinks far below, a […]
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6:47 AM The darkness turns gray; the misty fog rests over the water; the honeysuckle perfumes the air as white petals float on the still water. 7:03 AM Beneath the […]
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I don’t care if I’m dead as long as I’m still alive, in Heaven I mean though not Hell, I might be dead but I’ll still be lively, just somewhere […]
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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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Dust motes dance on sunlight streaming through a dingy window. Rusty mailbox, empty, always empty. Cadaverous cobwebs mocking back at him from a peeling wall. He sits alone in his […]
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for a while there I was worried I had cancer. I even joined a gym though I don’t know why I thought it would help. didn’t quit smoking or drinking, […]
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I have always wondered About the mood, Inside houses that dress themselves In yellow tungsten bulbs, Once evening descends Like children running down the stairs. Flowers of Van Gogh yellow, […]
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Melanie Gaughran is a university student in the city of subdued excitement, Bellingham, Washington. Particularly concerned with her internal workings and misworkings, she finds that putting them to paper can […]
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Thank you to everyone who continued to follow us during this hiatus, and thank you especially to those submitting to us. We’re back, and better than ever. (I think? Hopefully?) […]
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the dust storms whineagainst the windowas cherry dreamsslide inside.Searching a marigold,a child’s eyes bob tothe tunes of morningas do butterflies rise fromchrysanthemum jars.And so does the coupsurging from a younggirl’s diary […]
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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 Force Base. Five days ago, […]
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Stand at ocean-side, exhale screams cut through dense air, her throat tightens releasing weird screeching caterwauls. The ice melts and Sibyl climbs the tower; in gown of white with gold lace; coat-less, […]
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Where I earn my nine fifty and change each week, rules of physics make the surreal far from cheap.
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Entry Door Yes No Damage to exterior? X Interior? X [The lease says “no nails,” but upon her arrival in December it was a matter of days before […]
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Under a sulfur streetlamp, your crisscrossed polymer strips that carve berths for beverages from empty air reminded me of the elastic and steel rigs worn to hike stockings tight across […]
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1 These mornings, I wake to find silver threads in my hair — gleaming as if dipped in the winter moon. I have always loved oxidized ornaments and grey pullovers; […]
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INTERIOR FAMILY HOME – EVENING ADULT, any conscious human, late 20s to mid-30s, watching television in a beautiful suburban home they could never actually afford due to crippling student loans […]
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It was the upper floor of a solid 1950s style house in Piraeus with heavy ceiling fans and dust-laden blinds obscuring a view of the interior patio; they hadn’t been […]
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One fanciful Calcutta summer the world maps were ripped off from overused geography textbooks in an act of innocent revolution. You cherry-picked ecstatic reds from sunsetty Russian sky-palettes, scooping […]
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The war brought a boost to the flowermen’s activities, to which were added antiwar agitation among keelpods & rounding up draft dodgers. The great wave of immigration in the 1880’s […]
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Not like in the motion pictures but we had our moments. There is no record, no pesky scribe seeking the “hows” and “whys” of it. No scoops, no cover stories. […]
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We will not subside, for there can be no epiphany; we march into the sand for the egrets, hunting them with our knives. No other faith is real to me […]
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I live in the pulse of unconscious patterns. My civilized mind remains incapable of interpreting the illuminated life I experience outside the limits of ordinary consciousness. Today, I am an […]
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Halcyon and hurtful coexist in an apiary. On helicon’s rote appropriate ones reveille. In the middle of a horseshoe of memories I mime the lines I need to hear. They […]
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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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Come with me, it won’t be far; we have all night, and the seasons with it, in your heart: I’m dying. I’ll tell you about the nearer part of it, […]
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“Pickup for Angelo.” He leaned on the counter. “For who?” “Angelo.” He jerked his chin up—he had been told he mumbled. He had a deep voice and people often had […]
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[w]ham-o Sam-o [Suitors Up!] [yellow] [look out!] [look out!] rainbows of [arrows] candies of crushes [beads] and bangles [open the vessels] hit it now [hit it] rack up the [hearts] […]
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Unrelenting passion in a sonneteers delusion moving in rhythm with the windblown grasses hand in hand on a path through the hemlocks written vows of brazenness within a sensation. Transactional […]
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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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Created by Rakan Sindi and Kali Baker-Johnson, ZAHRA THE SHADOW FLAME is about a young woman named Zahra Darwesh, growing up in the fictional country of United Arabia, who is the last […]
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Below, The Metaworker presents an exclusive interview with the creators of the new comic book series, ZAHRA THE SHADOW FLAME. Check out this companion post for a sneak peek of the first […]
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comforting chatter from front-facing seat soothing justified cries in empathetic debate smoothing frosting onto clumping, cracked cake overflowing trashcan. No—it can wait Chemicals carve; his burning brain. supplanting endurance for […]
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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 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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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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Home, a major chord, played to sustain. Pattern of wallpaper’s texture ingrained into décor of mind. As chorus hook plays over reminisced wonder, synapses fire to warm chills of time […]
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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 sitting on the edge of […]
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The snow in my lawn isn’t white. It is rusty like the color of my flowerpot. “Papa, can I go out and make a snowman?” howls my son. I say […]
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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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I force myself to open the closed lids To catch a glimpse of my surroundings Try my utmost to overcome the lethargy Shake myself free of the stupor Tiredness which […]
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the snow melts grey into late december and mean music is making a sudden comeback in the bars saxophones and tatters of rattled live drumming after that santa stuff’s been […]
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daytime gutter vomit scared to change your way from one that has been making you money color-segregated schools for the blind the increasing pressure to pass— indeed, identify—as one of […]
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Some lands are royalty in just existence: the dragging of the boat from sand to sea, the thick of the tongue on the roof of the mouth – that is […]
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“This is not a Democracy!” More equals loss… Fight like this great and disgusting world is laughing at us. We let this happen, we march and stop. The phoney made […]
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I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. But that was twenty hours ago, and now we’re here, at the party, and the sky seems low and […]
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