Stone Circle Review

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|

newlyweds visit a capsized ship

by Kate Choi

Real piece of work, he says, surveying the forty-five degree deck. Bad rigging, adds his wife knowingly from the other side of the wreck. Uh-huh, he says, squinting at the transom. He reaches out and begins scraping at it with his fingernails. He thinks, This is the rustiest shipwreck I’ve ever seen, and it’s one of the recent ones. He thinks, Jesus. They’re getting worse by the year. He manages to pick off a barnacle and rolls it between his fingers. Crusty and rough, it digs into the pad of his thumb. Irritated, he shakes it off into the water. No wonder, he remarks. This sucks. His wife, in the meantime, is still staring at the ship. That has got to be about five hundred windows, she says. Mhm, the husband agrees absently, picking at another barnacle. This one might be better, he thinks. The second one is always better. He peels it off the paint. It’s fresher, wiggles a little in his grip. Its shell is cracked, and he pries at the gap with one salted finger. The second one’s always better, he thinks. The third’s a gamble, though. He considers for a moment, then shakes his head. Yes, sometimes it was better to quit when you were ahead. Yep, his wife says. That’s five hundred windows alright. The husband finishes washing his hands off in the seawater. He doesn’t look up at the ship. Come on, he says to his wife. Let’s go home. His wife is still staring upward. What a waste of windows, she says. Don’t you think this is a waste of windows? Don’t be ridiculous, the husband says irritably. He grabs her shoulder and maneuvers them back to their yacht.

Kate Choi is a creative writer from Seoul, South Korea. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and Adroit Summer Mentorship, her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, ONEART, The SHORE Poetry, and manywor(l)ds. Her work has been recognized by Polyphony Lit, Marginalia Poetry Contest, the NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing, Aster Lit, and more. She works as a poetry reader for Ploughshares, wildscape., and Twin Bird Review. You can find her online at katechoi.carrd.co.

The Editor2026-09-12T10:30:19-04:00September 12, 2026|

Adrift in the Age of Dictators

by Jude Marr

ships are trees, bodies are water
heart songs are fire: we are, because liquid
this world our container

I take breath from the bottom of the sky
watch bodies fall, a billion
cadences, rhythms of lost years

particles of plastic sift through air, sweet
as civet, or salt-tinged
resting or in motion, catching light

they drift, an ocean of crescent-shaped specks
where seabirds flail: remote, entangled
moons in the stomachs of birds.

Jude Marr (he, him) is a Pushcart-nominated trans poet and editor. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Acropolis and Whale Road Review. Jude’s first chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds (Finishing Line Press, 2017) was followed by a full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds (Animal Heart Press, 2020.) His next chapbook, Silence Will Not Save Us is forthcoming from The Broken Spine in November 2027. A native of Scotland, Jude has lived in three of the UK’s four countries and also spent ten years in the southern United States. He now lives in Coimbra, Portugal.

The Editor2026-09-07T14:48:26-04:00September 6, 2026|

Henrietta Leavitt Reads An Astronomical Glass Plate Negative

by Brian Evans-Jones

(Harvard, 1903)

Midwinter—the day cold, her fingers cold,
cold the room where she angles glass
to throw what light the low sun shares
onto these black stars—blotched on white
like speckles on an egg, a void
from which knowledge might hatch—but she
is fumbling, fumbling,
her fingers stiff, her reach so short—
she will try, she will scratch letters, lines,
to make God’s cosmic camouflage
mean something—Ah, says God,
staring up through the glass’s hard eye—
you are wrong, you are always wrong—
still her hand moves, just a little
less wrong than yesterday

Brian Evans-Jones is a poet and teacher from Britain, now living in New Hampshire. His poems are published or forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review, Cloudbank, The Café Review, Biscuit Hill, The Shore, and other journals. He won the 2017 Maureen Egen Award from Poets & Writers and was Poet Laureate of Hampshire, UK, in 2012–13. He teaches poetry online at The Poetry Place.

The Editor2026-09-05T10:32:36-04:00September 5, 2026|