“I’m not used to being in Nature” Is what comes to mind as I stand here at Still Point Staring up into space – Feeling somewhat out of place. I’m […]
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The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged
“I’m not used to being in Nature” Is what comes to mind as I stand here at Still Point Staring up into space – Feeling somewhat out of place. I’m […]
Read moreI always mowed the wild green hair of lawn, eyes of corn stalking me from across the street. Steering Dad’s tractor in the shapeof a nose ring in my middle of nowhere, how […]
Read moreBy the waves I felt the storm shall Death bring his scythe? Eagerly I looked for cover; loud thunderstorms drumming from the tempest that is blowing. ‘It’s that beat,’ I […]
Read moreOisín 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 born, Breen spent the last […]
Read more“through the view/of a hollow lens/like an eye surprised/by lost sight”
Read moreyou’re biting your nails again o sweet white of time I feel in the December rush of cold the whoosh of closed & open doors the portals if I knew […]
Read moreShaman paints the wolf and full moon blister red above a sinuous line of orange scales, serpent tail pointing to the past, head spitting a speckled frog half digested, white […]
Read moreDopo 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 the buoyant atoms- the iron […]
Read moreAnother stormy night in their neighborhood a warning came for twisters, hail and fire no one said anything about ghosts in the dark. Eerie hours when the clocks have failed […]
Read moreIn a chamber with three hundred ninety eyes there is no place not to be seen. No blind spots. The corners, the ceiling, on the back of two cattle statues […]
Read more“My mother says the camera steals souls,” #MetaworkerMonday
Read moreShe 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 knighted, unable to cry out […]
Read moreThis dimly-lit café, there’s a voice then two, then three speaking like a detuned triangle with so much impatience. Winter, dense and black, crams itself into this room. Outside, muted […]
Read moresomewhere 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 […]
Read moreI would step out of my bodyto dream I was concurrentwith the wind and light,or the painted stonestossed over the embankmentinto the hearts of rivers.I would grow more frailthan the […]
Read moreTwo to speak loud and clear for all and too many to hear; secrets of an alcove and two more join for some chatter; it is a talk show of […]
Read moreConnie 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 […]
Read moreThere 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, […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreA 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 […]
Read moreMy 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 […]
Read moreKill 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 […]
Read more[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 […]
Read moreA 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreThe 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. […]
Read moreYou 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 […]
Read moreTake 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreIn 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. […]
Read more“try hate later on” #MetaworkerMonday
Read more“as I hunch in gnarly leather, drool, toothless,” #metaworkermonday
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreDid 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreWhen 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 […]
Read moremay 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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreI sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried soul […]
Read moreSomeday 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 […]
Read moreThere’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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreWhen 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 […]
Read moreNights 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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreDust 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 […]
Read morefor 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, […]
Read moreI 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, […]
Read moreMelanie 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 […]
Read morethe 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 […]
Read moreStand 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, […]
Read moreWhere I earn my nine fifty and change each week, rules of physics make the surreal far from cheap.
Read moreUnder 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 […]
Read more1 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; […]
Read moreOne 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 […]
Read moreNot 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. […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read moreHalcyon 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 […]
Read moreeveryday 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 […]
Read more[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] […]
Read moreUnrelenting 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 […]
Read moreHow 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 […]
Read morecomforting 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 […]
Read morethe 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 […]
Read moreIt 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 […]
Read moreHome, 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreSpindrift 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 […]
Read moreI 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 […]
Read morethe 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 […]
Read moredaytime 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 […]
Read moreSome 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 […]
Read more“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 […]
Read moreLove 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 […]
Read moreA road divider on our thoroughfare has been constructing since three major eclipses, going under the idea scalpel by fickle engineers – flowers or trees – it’s a hard decision […]
Read moreDamian Campana is a Creative Writing student at a community college in Rochester, NY. He is an aspiring creator. He is passionate about telling stories through different aspects of […]
Read moreLife is supposed to be music But we are the notes not the listeners Maybe we are God’s music Chords being strummed on some cosmic level Leftover reverberation echoing from […]
Read moreCan your mind sustain the burden for the beating heart to heave? Will you bare the heaviness of being within a lightness of the form? Does the little weevil relent […]
Read moreEditor’s Note: Per the author’s request, we have left this piece untitled. * These crumbs are from so many places yet after every meal they ripen sweeten in time for […]
Read moreD.M. Rice is a non-binary writer from Dallas, TX whose work has been featured in the Aletheia Journal, Sybil, The Bandit Zine, and the anthologies Rec*og*nize, Nameless Woman, Kill Line, and […]
Read moreWhatever be the season, perhaps you are the reason, for the shadowed man whom limps down the narrow lane. With help of a burled cane, or such unequivocal refrain within […]
Read moreMegan Denese Mealor has been published widely in numerous journal, most recently Children Churched & Daddies, Beakful, streetcake, and Harbinger Asylum. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her debut poetry collection, […]
Read moreFour tea cups lay unattended since Mittag – on the black, bedraggled table in the canteen. You and I – drinking each other in— Slow, dainty sips. Each tea […]
Read moreNow that you’ve passed-through woods deeper and darker than these — climbed into eternity — can you tell me, when our hearts stop, and we’re poised among the mysteries that […]
Read moreYou’d expect the power button to be a rare diamond fueling a holographic desktop, folders overflowing in bitcoin. Or that answers just appear, thoughts as search engines. But in fact […]
Read moreTo know life is to greet knowing you won’t unmeet. To know life is to see your creators split into demigods, degrading into man and woman. They can’t be fixed; […]
Read moreGilded morning shatters sleep, dreams cling on with tenacious teeth. A confused reality sorting through a fragmented emotional state. Warm bed, cold toast. Sensations linger throughout the day. A […]
Read moreI have been raised to fear my footfalls in the dark to be a walking skirt is to sacrifice safety, sway like an open gate for danger. but I collect […]
Read moreWith Lines from “The Apple Trees at Olema” by Robert Hass Shakes me by the raw, white, backlit flaring of her lightning streaked hand. Fingers whip, burn my veiny branches […]
Read morecan people see when you look at their facebook calories in chocolate shake calories in wendys chocolate frosty how to get into hiking hiking for depression hiking for people who […]
Read moreI watched you slide swiftly into the fog encapsulating Eagle Junction railway station. Scraps of rust leaking with oil-stained dew flung into the past, and in the faint glinting of […]
Read moreSKIN is the bodies first line of defense. our metal shell wrap-around sometimes, your body can confuse fortress for prison, my mother is able to show me exactly where the […]
Read moreHow did the despair become fluid for clear, dry eyes to shed? Why did the burden on the heart allow the stress and cause the beat to finally stop […]
Read moreTonight the battle will begin. But first, as the concealer smooths across my eye folds, I picture her breathlessly saying hello to him, always making sure to say his name […]
Read moreI 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 the smoke. I was told […]
Read moreNo art without startle No belief without a lie No character without an act No business without sin No coffee without a fee No culture without a cult No entrance […]
Read moreA Gymnast propels through the air after launching off the springboard. Camera flashes capture blurry movements: Facebook posts for later, if She wins. Judges dress in hooking avenue suits, out […]
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