The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged
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 the biblical fall,suspended breasts clasped […]
Read more
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 busy in the hot heat […]
Read more
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 swell and recede like tides. […]
Read more
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, rich crimsons, deep blues, and […]
Read more
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 today, just a tired man […]
Read more
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 of breathing liberty and chipping […]
Read more
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 your throat I can tell […]
Read more
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 really plankton because we needed […]
Read more
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 This house helps her to […]
Read more
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 the small horizontal scar on […]
Read more
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 asdrakes parade near the breaking […]
Read more
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 would reject mundane angles and […]
Read more
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 room once more. She’s always […]
Read more
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 knew from pretty early […]
Read more
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 nothinga quietude of less wrathful […]
Read more
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 I’ll convertagain for another church […]
Read more
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 Portugal under low apple branches […]
Read more
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 invisibility.His long colt legs, long […]
Read more
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 and rising tidethat never overtakes […]
Read more
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, that doesn’t mean that you […]
Read more
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 glare of a red summer […]
Read more
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 fire –mere – the thoughts […]
Read more
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 An everywhere that exists below […]
Read more
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 were one all through? But […]
Read more
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 throughdetails while I dozed in […]
Read more
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 good, because she was out […]
Read more
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 ilk, Bucking the frothing cream […]
Read more
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 open. A girl, around my […]
Read more
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 do with my writer friends. […]
Read more
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 the skin lesion on his […]
Read more
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. I’m getting better and better […]
Read more
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. My boss would now be […]
Read more
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 the buoyant atoms- the iron […]
Read more
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 knighted, unable to cry out […]
Read more
“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 past month have been going […]
Read more
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, […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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, and I’m not going to […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 don’t want to, but life […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 permanent one—one that included health […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
I sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried soul […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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, […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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; […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
A 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 more
Hey everyone! Matthew here, we have a special Friday post for you! You may remember Alex Clare as the author of He’s Gone, a mystery novel starring the transgender detective Robyn […]
Read more
Megan 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 more
Four 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 more
To 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 more
Gilded 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 more
I 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 more
She’d had a cupcake for breakfast every day for the last month. Thick on the icing, more often than not with sprinkles, occasionally filled with sweet cream or more icing. […]
Read more
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 whip, burn my veiny branches […]
Read more
can 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 more
I 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 more
SKIN 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 more
I was born an old soul they say, a quiet spectator mulling over muddled thoughts, about what I don’t know, perhaps a previous lifetime. I woke to bird sounds in […]
Read more
The weed is helping. I can’t survive without it. Honestly, it more or less serves as a natural replacement for Lexapro, because fuck that shit. It’s like lightening your hair […]
Read more
Tonight 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 more
He stood outside the door asking for directions, lost hope in hand. Paying the toll with a pocketful of dreams. Aspirations evaporating at the sound of his own voice. A […]
Read more
Do not allow the quietness that saturates the halls of night break through the dawn. For it will shatter all perception of time and space, grabbing reality by […]
Read more
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 noises that I can feel […]
Read more
I was born a human jigsaw puzzle. I emerged from my mother’s womb, not as a whole baby, but in scattered pieces. The doctors worked non-stop as they assembled me. […]
Read more
Fragments of dreams scattered among the ruins of once lofty ambitions, buried along with lost loves and white lace promises Standing tall against the crumbling visions. Whispers of gargoyles devouring […]
Read more
Tsuki Amai’s wristwatch emitted a soft click, and she tugged gently at her ear to make sure, for the tenth time that day, that she was awake. Her mother hated […]
Read more
It’s not smoggy like they say it is in London, at least I don’t think so, but the River Thames is filthier than I had imagined. I saw it from […]
Read more
Darling, listen. no matter what we do our fingers will end up blistered, our palms bloody if we look into the mirror long enough to know anything, if we pull […]
Read more
Someone would love to have you for a daughter; Wouldn’t mind you in the attic, stealing their things. The walls would be yours, as would your body And four […]
Read more
Editor-in-Chief’s Note: Gerardeen Santiago is a poet and publisher I originally met at Glassless Minds in Oceanside. When the Metaworker staff was suggesting new people to interview, she was at […]
Read more
Every year, from the first I was assigned to the graveyard, I would watch the headstones from my place upon the highest pine tree. My job was to make sure […]
Read more
We sit on the precipice of Heaven and pollution; you hand Me an empty box and promise Desultory protection. Our bodies, superimposed From two different tangles of lake water […]
Read more
Obsidian, black, but when held up to light it is semi-transparent. Also known as Apache Tears. Roughly circular in shape, about half an inch by half an inch. Received by […]
Read more
Yesterday you were five foot ten and today your toes don’t touch the base of the bed. You cocoon yourself deeper into the blankets, stuffing your face into fluff and […]
Read more
Sometimes I like to reimagine religion and the stories I was told as a child, so that it fits the way I understand the world now. I tell myself it […]
Read more
I lost my heart last night. It must have happened in my sleep. I didn’t notice at first, but when I looked in the mirror this morning I saw the […]
Read more
If I were to outlive you, I would feel the poet in me blackening, nails pulling in like a sea of petals in the mouth at the end of the […]
Read more
The letter I wrote Lilly first thing after I found out talks to her in the present tense, like she still exists, because she does still exist for me, or […]
Read more
Every morning I look in the mirror and hope for a different reflection. The problem with makeup is that it doesn’t cover every scar. And I’ve got a lot of […]
Read more
I reveal the parts I want you to see you think you know me masquerade ugly thoughts inside my head mourning at the side of a haunted bed empty womb […]
Read more
I hold the moon like a baby in my arms. If I let it go, it will fall. The light of the night will die. Out of the corner of […]
Read more