Stone Circle Review

In midlife,

by Kristen Holt-Browning

feeling reckless and suburban, we are tired of the pond
at the far end of the yard, the same old ecosystem as last year, stones

slick with repetitive moss, another snakeskin shed at the little shore,
another new reptile sated, sluggish, from the frog and mosquito buffet.

The water beckons but we will never enter, the algae depths a murky
mystery in this spongy-moth summer of our discontent, their hunger

a destruction, the leaves ragged and demolished, the constant crunch
as they eat and shit all day, all night. The devastation almost soothing,

a background steadiness. We seem ceaseless, too: we still wake up
every morning, although we are likely in the lateness of our lives

and like I said we want to do something impractical, unnecessary,
poorly thought out or not at all, so we buy a hot tub, a second body

of water in the yard now, this one a chemical cliché, but it’s okay, I’ve got
my back to the molded plastic and I’m thinking about Dante, and how

he constructed hell in layers, the devil at the bottom, frozen forsaken
in a lake, and I’m wondering when we melted hell, shifted it from cold

to burning, Satan moaning in the molten muck, forever gnawing cursed bones,
eating the sins of Judas and a Roman guy whose crime I can’t remember. I slip deeper

into artificial bubbles. This is how some people baptize those they think deserve it:
the body submerged, only to emerge into a fresh and godly new beginning—

look, even the two of us, when we get out of the hot water, we are pink as babies,
larval and famished, our skin both softened and chemically evolved.

Kristen Holt-Browning is the author of the novel Ordinary Devotion (Monkfish Book Publishing), the poetry chapbook The Only Animal Awake in the House (Moonstone Press), and the forthcoming poetry collection Watershed (Fernwood Press). She lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York State, where she works as a freelance editor. Learn more at kristenholt-browning.com, or on Instagram @theholtbrowning.

The Editor2026-09-27T11:49:12-04:00September 27, 2026|

Amphibious

by Dana Holley Maloney

Driving home in darkness, we pass patches on Webster Road
where spring peepers are shrieking like car alarms. We
can map the vernal ponds by the pockets of whistling we pass.

And once down our driveway, standing in darkness, the stereo
sound of this sort of symphony, high-pitched chirping circling
around itself, the tell-tale chatter of the wood frogs as overlay.

The pond beside us the product of what the land wants when
the rain arrives, when what was woods becomes puddled, overflow
heading for the brook with its minor cascades. For some time we are

an island encircled by flow and falls, water running, even babbling.
Then the rain slows, stills, and sinks, the soil audibly drinks. Below us,
water continues toward river and aquifer. No less than miracle,

this metamorphosis–water to land in one day, across a lifetime.
Not long from now, trees will sing.

Dana Holley Maloney is a native New Jerseyan who lives and writes in midcoast Maine. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Tar River Poetry, The Lake, Pine Hills Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Montclair State University. More at danamaloney.com.

The Editor2026-09-26T11:24:51-04:00September 26, 2026|

Why We Celebrate Birthdays

by Philip Venzke

So we can meet again
under that apple tree
which we hope to plant
sometime next year

and plot the harvest
we would like to eat
and discuss blossoms
we need to breathe.

Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin. His poetry is widely published in magazines throughout the U.S. and Europe. He is the author of four chapbooks and one book of poetry.

The Editor2026-09-20T11:23:32-04:00September 20, 2026|

The Balloon Bouquet

by Robert McDonald

It’s spring, and sticks
and dead limbs have fallen
from the trees.
When I walk
on the roadway here

at Rosehill, last year’s leaves
scuttle
behind me,
urged on by the wind. Trapped
in high branches, the sad

foil tatters
of someone’s birthday balloon
flash and twist, speared
like fish. The crows
in nearby oaks yell

with some derision
that the balloon bouquet
had been given
to someone for whom birthdays
were over. The crows

don’t know anyone beneath
these eroded
headstones,
but they love the sky;
alive, alive

they shout to anyone
who listens; the crows love
their perches,
the ten thousand
bent fingers

of the trees,
and the lawn;
like so much
of the land,
it used to be a meadow

Robert McDonald’s first book of poems, A Streetlight That’s Been Told It Used to Be the Moon, is coming from Roadside Press in 2026. His work has appeared in Does It Have Pockets, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Marrow, Gyroscope, Tabula Rasa Review, and The Madrid Review, among others. He lives with his husband in Chicago.

The Editor2026-09-19T10:49:02-04:00September 19, 2026|

Like a River

by Beate Sigriddaughter

He rushed by her like a river. Like lightning in summer rain, a flash that turned from promise into memory, followed by the unexpected. She really didn’t want to leave. She flicked the stem of her apple on the side of the road. There. She had eaten the rest, including the core, including the seeds. Let an apple tree grow inside her. She didn’t care. He had a way of looking at eagles in flight, as though he could see his soul up there among them. Once he had looked at her like that. She zipped up her jacket. She wasn’t far now from the river and its tantalizing hanging bridge. She could hear the roar of the water. So close. Snow started falling. She reviewed the confusing beauty of fairy tales. In one you are rewarded for heeding every call for help, the bread in the oven, the apples ripe on their tree. In another you are forbidden to heed all cries, or you would never manage your impossible task. And so it was in her world. That’s why you came equipped with a heart, the river whispered, to help you choose in all this confusion.

Beate Sigriddaughter (sigriddaughter.net) grew up in Nürnberg, Germany, and lives and writes in Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), where she has served as poet laureate. She is on Facebook @ beate.sigriddaughter.

The Editor2026-09-13T11:03:12-04:00September 13, 2026|