The Editor - Stone Circle Review

5 07, 2026

Conditions

The Editor2026-07-05T10:43:57-04:00July 5, 2026|

by Jan Hassmann

An autumn toll from Mum, in tears.
Dad’s got another thing.

You’d think past years of gleaning
and three kids in the arts,
a man can let down sleeves
and guard.

But only seasons ripen without toil,
and bitter soil feeds only prudence.

Dragging droughts drink deeper draughts!
is what dads say,
and a father’s wisdom never falters.

The rain barrel is full,
and the wasps are thriving,
feasting on the lustrous wine.

Jan Hassmann toils in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. His words have appeared in HAD, Maudlin House, BULL, Revolution John, Blood & Honey and elsewhere. He’s on X: @ItsJanHassmann.

4 07, 2026

Asterixis

The Editor2026-07-04T10:30:34-04:00July 4, 2026|

by R.C. Blenis

The liver thinks yellow thoughts.
Ask anyone in hepatic failure—
blood becomes philosophy,
ammonia scales the brain
until Tuesday tastes purple,
until yesterday wakes tomorrow.
The body keeps calendars.
My hands knew first: flutter
to tremor, morse code tapping
against the porcelain sink;
my mouth on mute, fingers
spelling. Even severed:
phantom hands still sign
in air, in ache.

R.C. Blenis is a nurse and educator writing from Atlanta. His poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, JAMA, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, and West Trade Review, among others. More at rcblenis.com and @hillbillypilgrim.

28 06, 2026

Don Simms Has a Message for You

The Editor2026-06-28T10:29:20-04:00June 28, 2026|

by Darren Morris

My father, yet alive but without purpose,
loosens his mind like a botched windsor
or the rope of a dinghy on a lake at night.

The Boomers conspire to lose their sanity.
Nearing death, angels pepper his half-sleep
with air defense. His bombs dropped long ago.

Without throwing ourselves over their coffins,
couldn’t we still rise to the occasion of loss?
Or had we inherited their stark indifference?

Don Simms, my little league football coach,
would have something to say at this point.
He would whack you sharply on your helmet.

He would say, Listen up. Cut the crap. Stop
fucking around, dipshits. You are blowing it.
You ain’t doin’ yer job. So pay attention.

Distraction was the largest threat back then.
Not ability or lack thereof. We were small.
One kid was as talentless as the next.

Some were more sluggish. Some were
afraid of violence. Some had weak chins.
If we got hurt during the game

we were told to lie still so the ref
could stop play, and they could get to us.
The following Saturday, I got hurt

so lay there looking up at nothingness
the way I did when I played the baby Jesus
in the manger on Christmas Eve at church.

The whole game stopped for me and I felt
holy and wept a little at my holiness.
It was maybe the first time I remember

leaving my body and looking down on it.
The men finally got to me. My facemask framed
their heads in an iconostasis: Coach Simms

filled my left eye, the team doctor in my right.
What’sa matter? Asked Coach. I held up
one hand with my blessed finger trembling,

unbroken, and told them someone stepped
on it. At which point, the doc arose and Coach
told me to Get the fuck up. You ain’t hurt.

And then he cracked me sharply on my helmet
and down I came back into my body and walked
alone, not carried aloft, off the field. I was six.

Fifty years hence, my father is busy chasing fake
sex partner profiles online, in his dark, labyrinthine
archive of fantasy. It muddies his relationship

with reality. It takes his money. It infects devices.
Which he calls me now in a froth of despair, only
to offer some fix. Fretting, not over unpaid taxes

not over the destination or station of the soul,
but for the perplex of technology he does not need.
I need Don Simms to interrupt. I need Coach with

clipboard in hand, to slap my father hard
and snap him out of it. I need Coach Simms
to say, Listen up. Cut the crap, you baby.

Everybody cries now and then. But you
ain’t worth your salt, not compared to those
bastards that weep over what was lost.

Darren Morris is a writer living in Richmond, Virginia. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His work appears in the current issues of The Yale Review and Willow Springs Magazine. His poems are forthcoming at the American Poetry Review.

27 06, 2026

Errand, with Jar and Fox

The Editor2026-06-27T10:11:42-04:00June 27, 2026|

by Lee Fraser

Based on Year 1 spelling list vocabulary

I am here to get a gift for Dad
with the jar from Mum
(the one for job day).

I go by pens, a cube game, a cat bowl, a big ball,
look at a map, a fun name tag, a grey cap.

Now I find a green book,
with a win stamp on the top page
like the kind at home,
but one he has not got.
I hold it.
I hug it
and as I go to get the jar in my bag

I see a kite.
It is red.
It has a sun on it.
It can fit in my bag, if I make it.

It tugs at me,
deep and big, in my guts.
My neck is hot
and I rub my lip
fold my lip
pin my lip in my hand.

No one can see but there is
a fox, low in my bag,
and it says I have got to get the kite.
It says the kite is the best
and we can take it to ride gusts,
tall and bold, up with the birds.
It says I am mad if I get the book.
And here, with Mum and Dad far,
with the jar and the bag
I can see it win.

Lee Fraser is from Aotearoa New Zealand and uses poetry for ogling life’s details, emotional archaeology, and comic relief. Her full-time occupations have included field linguist and parent. She has been published in Amsterdam Quarterly, Consilience, Cordite, Ink Sweat & Tears, ONE ART, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Thimble and elsewhere. Some of her work is at leefraserpoetry.com and on Instagram @leefraserpoetry. On Bluesky she is leefraser.bsky.social.

21 06, 2026

Fugato

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

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