Stone Circle Review

Fugato

by Kimberly Hall

a Markov Sonnet / for D. Shostakovich

Morning, & the bird outside my window is not a ghost.
The light seems to break its bones, colors the horizon
red through the throat – wings beating like a drum.

***

The light seems to break bones. Colors the horizon
red through the throat. Wings, beating like a drum,
shudder a fractured chorus of dawn’s shadows.

***

Ready? Through your throat, wings beat like a drum.
Shudder a fractured chorus of dawn’s shadows,
half-steps heavy in the blood. Alto echoes soprano.

***

Shudder – a fractured chorus of dawn’s shadows,
half-steps heavy in the blood. Alto echoes soprano
beneath your fingers as they dance across the keys.

***

Half-steps heave in the blood. Alto echoes soprano
beneath your fingers as they dance across the keys –
so carefully, it is as if the music itself is holding them.

***

Beneath your fingers as they dance across the keys –
so carefully, it is as if the music itself is holding them
at knife-point – what secrets lie here? What wounds?

***

So careful – as if the music itself is holding you
at knife-point. What secrets lie here? What wounds
hang suspended in the distance between a hand & an ear?

***

A knife points at what secrets lie here. What wounds
hang suspended in the distance. Between hand & ear,
every phrase risks something. Every sharp edge, a loss.

***

Suspense hangs in the distance between hand & ear.
Every phrase risks something – a sharp edge, a loss.
Perhaps silence tells the safer story.

***

Every phrase risks something. A sharp edge, a loss
perhaps. Silence tells a safer story,
true – the same cord that tunes a piano can cut a throat.

***

Perhaps silence tells a safer story
than truth. The same chord may tune a piano or cut a throat.
Dissonance will swallow a pulse as easily as a tongue.

***

The truth: the same chords tune a piano & gut a throat
& still – dissonance. Swallowed pulse, uneasy tongue, &
still, still – the heart rebels against its cage. Sings for flight.

Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet based in Southeast Texas. She holds degrees in psychology and behavioral science. Her first collection of poetry, Honey Locust, was published in December 2024 by hotpoet inc. You can find more of her work on her website: kimberly-hall.com

The Editor2026-06-21T10:40:15-04:00June 21, 2026|

Moral

by Tom Snarsky

How much electricity is there
in a sparrow’s heart, at rest
like no one, now, abetting

circulation, a thousand plus
bpm at its fastest, machine
learning how to fly and how

to die. I’ve gotta stop
putting god in these, he’s not
interested in the watch

once it’s shipped, only the putting
-together of it, the assembly
those lonely square faces

before the three black lines start
arcing around them, little
mechanical janitors

sweeping out days.
I act amazed but really I’ve seen
the trick before, I know where

the card goes, how it appears
on the other side of the window
like magic. I’ve been the assistant,

the cameraman, the gaffer.
Stolen all
that valor, crept toward death

wearing hats, how else.
The self is a Chris Fleming joke:
you have to talk and move

at the same time. Lying alone
won’t do, nor will hobbies,
poetry, gardening, the

late discovery of board games,
ornithology, ornithography
or volunteering with the wildlife

rescue. You have to be sick
and mean it, have to give
the mourning dove Patient

of the Week, have to trade
your early weak ideas
for late ones, convictions

ramified in the dark nights.

Tom Snarsky is the author of Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press), A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems (Animal Heart Press), and MOUNTEBANK (Broken Sleep Books). His chapbook Tired Light is forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing House in October. He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats. Website, social media: Twitter, IG, Bluesky

The Editor2026-06-20T10:28:04-04:00June 20, 2026|

technophobia/

by Beth Gordon

I don’t know what to do with the robots who live like cockroaches in my phone. This one looks like
my maternal grandmother: her mouth hinged: a squeezebox of monotone syllables & unlikely words:
a doppelganger of wrinkles. This one looks like the squirrel in my garden if the squirrel in my garden
was periwinkle blue. This one looks like my nightmare after watching Journey to the Center of the Earth:
lava swallowing me like a gnat. This one looks like my childhood beach if my childhood beach had
no rot. No jellyfish corpses. No empty beer cans. This one looks like a jellyfish corpse repurposed as
a fountain of youth. This one looks like a phone booth as if the new machines don’t understand that
the old machines have been dismantled: unassembled: melted into the lake of fire. This one looks
like a funeral procession: every pallbearer has three hands. This one looks like a sunflower grave:
yellow & deep. Every petal on the verge of eruption: every garden spider an ambulance in disguise.

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother in Asheville, NC. She is the author of five chapbooks, Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press), The Water Cycle (Variant Literature), How to Keep Things Alive (Split Rock Press) Crone (Louisiana Literature) and The First Day (Belle Point Press); and one full length collection, This Small Machine of Prayer (Kelsay Books). Her second full-length collection, Alchemist or Arsonist, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2027. Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Instagram, Threads and BlueSky @bethgordonpoet.

The Editor2026-06-14T11:42:26-04:00June 14, 2026|

Inklings

by Angela Arnold

They may even have names,
amongst themselves, the people
peopling our dreams.
Could have things to discuss,
when our backs are turned
into the legitimate light of day.
While we type and shop
and Zoom, in parallel
to their insubstantial
doings, or not doings.
Could be holding their own
council meetings, for all we know.
Aliens of the imagination.
Ancestral ghosts.
First inklings of a beyond.
Breeding grounds for angelic visions.
They coax us toward flight
and hold our hands as we jump
from one reality to another
just before sleep, just as we half-
remember them, our doubles
and strangely mutant selves and
friends long lost shining again
in this place witched-different
and yet so much itself:
no worn-out sameness there –
just life as fluid, seeping itself
into every possibility.

Angela Arnold is a poet and artist. Her poems have appeared widely in print magazines, anthologies and online, both in the UK and elsewhere. Collections: In|Between (Stairwell Books, 2023) and Soul Places forthcoming with TPL. Pamphlet Otherdays (Alien Buddha Press, 2026). She lives in Wales. Angela’s social media handles on X: @AngelaArnold777 and Bluesky: angelaarnold777.bsky.social.

The Editor2026-06-13T10:40:25-04:00June 13, 2026|

The Station Ghazal

by Annie Zaidi

Winter grapes still linger outside the station
Men lurk, women murmur outside the station

Oranges splotched brown with rot, but still
They sell like hot cakes outside the station

Winter was like spring and spring ablaze like summer
It rained all of last year outside the station

He scratches his waist, she lays out blue towels
The end is always near outside the station

Perhaps they are too heavy to pray, or even cry
At night children disappear from outside the station

A memory whipped into batter at the vada-pao stall
I cannot eat for fear outside the station

At midnight, leaning against the skywalk railing
The city’s heart unfurls outside the station

Annie Zaidi writes across multiple genres including fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. Her published work includes The Comeback, Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation, City of Incident, Prelude to a Riot, and Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales. She is on X as @anniezaidi and Instagram as @bread.cement.cactus.

The Editor2026-06-07T22:27:56-04:00June 7, 2026|