Stone Circle Review

Driving to San Pedro

by Brandon Shane

from West Long Beach
trucks containing America
roll slow twenty-fives on roads
whose disrepair you accept,
a bridge hoisted by God
containers on every side
hiding all the birds you don’t see,
the sky is auspiciously white
clouds at poster distance
and another bridge
a little more human
signs that say slow down
note the hard work
ports and ports municipalities
who it belongs to every
thing from everywhere
the roads turning turning
and you return each time
a little more proud
a little more confused
as to what it all does.

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in Rattle, trampset, Variant Lit, The Chiron Review, Stone Circle Review, IceFloe Press, The Marrow Poetry, One Art Poetry, Spectra Poets, Plague Circus Press, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English. Find him on Twitter @HalfTheLobster.

The Editor2026-08-29T10:53:42-04:00August 29, 2026|

Gift

by Leah Muncy

The secret is that we all wish we had it worse

than anyone else. The doctor rides in on his horse

and says: I’m sorry, this pain is original. This frees you

from the thousands of angelfish swimming upstream

in your chest. Frees you from the vision of hands

in the desert, plucking the numbers

from your tiny clock. And your nights, once infested

with flies carrying messages to the altar,

God just standing there in his strange robe.

Leah Muncy’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, The Skybridge Review, The Passionfruit Review, b l u s h, West 10th, New York Magazine, Architectural Digest, and others. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Pony, and works as an art director. You can find her on Instagram @lelahmoney.

The Editor2026-08-23T12:05:51-04:00August 23, 2026|

Another Dream About My Mother

by Stephanie K. Merrill

You know too much to stay
too long even in my sleep.
Like Kassandra you’ve seen enough.
No one will hear you now.
The tornado black sky is coming down.
Kansas storms appointed like ancient vestals
keep raging their truths for the earth.
In the end we’re all being chased,
smelling like fire, trying to keep our souls full
while overhead the star of the Great Dog,
Sirius, bows to you.

Stephanie K. Merrill (she/her) is a retired high school English teacher. She has works published in a variety of literary magazines including One Art, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, UCity Review, and Trampoline Poetry. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her debut collection, Finding the Heart, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She lives in Austin, Texas.

The Editor2026-08-22T10:16:40-04:00August 22, 2026|

A Long Beginning

by Ágnes Cserháti

Late last summer—
I remember well the lanky shade of love’s third moulting,
buttons scattered… nymph-like and lightsore,
breath touching breath, the low sun draping
over the arc of a fleeting dog-eared
cloud, your surrender
to fingertips and slow lips wet with soundless whistles,
a single reed struck through and trembling, long-limbed—
lying flat, flung, then furled
in the distanced space
between us.

*

It began with December and snow, your hands spread like ferns,
the small of your back curled into your knees, curled
between mine, adjusting
to the given space. I breathed in the arc
of your mouth,
pulled at your tucked shirt,
at time, unfurling and exhilarate, your spores
woken and keening, marked for one course alone.
Dishevelled, we caught for air,
collected our fronds,
taking in the hours
apart.

*

Then there was the proverbial barn, slatted with light
and silence, its walls of red hemlock roughsawn and yielding,
words dwelling among us (and we among them),
our heads heavy on feathered down,
your wooly eyes shut and reaching
into mourning. To borrow from you
was to shape words from you lips
swelling a soft touch,
sleep’s steady awakening
a long beginning.

Ágnes Cserháti’s writing has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, PN Review, and the New York Quarterly, among others. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition and Vallum Poetry Award. She won the Hart House Poetry Competition twice and the 2025 John Lent Poetry/Prose Award. Her chapbook, unremembered, was published with Frog Hollow Press in 2019 as part of their Dis/Ability series and Pilgrim Vox by Kalamalka Press in 2026. She is associate editor for Amphora, the Alcuin Society’s journal on the book arts, and founder and editor of Rufus Books Publishing (@rufusbooks_ca). You can find her on Instagram @agnescserhati.

The Editor2026-08-16T10:14:16-04:00August 16, 2026|

Cry pretty

by Catherine O’Brien

I think honestly
I live dishonestly.

I play you
by and from the heart.
I am the water
that drinks the sun.

I lean on harmony.
I’ve dropped the tempo
and tickled the synth.

I comb the pattern
for its crime.
I taste the blast
of the furnace.
I drain the expenditure
from your sorrow.
I hit you with
the reason you are
abstract from fun.
I am a tornado that
upon impact chooses love.
I’m a liferaft when
you reach the shore.

Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. Her work has most recently appeared in Ghost Parachute, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Frazzled Lit Magazine, Irish Country Magazine, Washing Windows V and Bending Genres. You can find out more on X @abairrud2021 and Bluesky @catherineobrien.bsky.social.

The Editor2026-08-15T11:16:56-04:00August 15, 2026|