Stone Circle Review

“An enchantment has entered my eyes, a beautiful vision arose in my mind and made its way to my heart.”

-- Mirabai, "The Cry of the Heart" - Translated by Sushil Rao

“I slip and curse like a broken lobster, washcloth in one claw, plastic cup for rinsing in the other. I feel ridiculous and sad.”

ICYMI, my micro appeared recently in the Mardi Gras issue of Boudin/McNeese Review 🦞🥃

www.mcneese.edu/thereview/ba...

A flyer showing a photo of Alina Stefanescu, with long beautiful light borwn hair and a tan long-sleeved shirt. Also her book cover of My Heresies, and info about The Writer's Center Poetry Book Club. March 11th at 7PM online. Clickable link in the comments.

This Wednesday! Our first book club meeting with The Writer's Center! Link to register in the comments. Free, on Zoom.

Hear Alina Stefanescu read and ask her all your poetry questions! ❤

Cover the newest issue of Rattle, with cover art by Nicky O'Connell. In the image, a stone path through a gloomy forest (all trunks, no leaves) navigated by a school of gentle blue butterflies, each carrying a lantern.

Text of a poem called "Island of the Day Before" by Jane Zwart, too long to reproduce here.

Text of a poem called "Island of the Day Before" by Jane Zwart, too long to reproduce here.

Grateful to have a poem (with its title lifted from an Umberto Eco novel) in the newest issue of @rattlepoetry.bsky.social, a Magazine--and community--I've loved for a long, long time. Thank you, @timothygreen.bsky.social.

Hey Lancaster PA folks, this Sunday @mgarrigan.bsky.social and I will be reading from our new books at Nooks Gallery & Bookstore.

Thank you for sharing your work with Stone Circle, LJ!

The birds of the Haworth dead by LJ Ireton   At this hour, the bluebells sink into the background blue of shipwrecks. The dead rest under tables, silent, everywhere low is stone. Lichen lies draped, almost graceful, over the old ...

I am honoured to have a poem published in The Stone Circle Review. It is called 'The birds of the Haworth dead', available to read here: stonecirclereview.com/the-birds/ @stonecirclereview.bsky.social

“A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps.”

-- Paul Celan

In case you missed it this morning...

In case you're wondering about the "wurst", our apartment was over a deli/cheesesteak place called The Wurst House. It's now a bougie pizzeria.

It's the 40th anniversary of the night I met my wonderful wife. How do I know that, after all these years, you might ask?

#HowIMetYourMother

"MY HAND FEELS TOUCHED AS WELL AS IT TOUCHES" ON THE REALITY OF THINGS "It is not consciousness that touches or feels," writes Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "but the hand." The hand wants to see, we know from Goethe. The hand opens to the word, says Edmond Jabès. "Sometimes I'd like nothing better than to get away and come to Paris, to feel you touch my hand," writes Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan. Throughout philosophy, throughout literature, throughout epistolary togetherness, throughout the whole of Time the Hand.

Taking refuge for a brief moment in the cemetery of forgotten drafts—

P.S. I PRACTISED THE ÉTUDE TODAY Today, the feature wall bears a different motif, the way light refracts against Mother's vintage chinaware casting apologies back to a sender — for absence. By evening, I’ve only practised the etúde once, my execution poor, like that exam with an unexpected Distinction, the day she waited two hours at Kensington. Outside, snow drifts accentuating the chords I always found hard to reach. Self-study is not my discipline—except when she stirs soup counter-clockwise, time miraculously slowing above the frozen lake, two swans briefly coming into focus. Today, I cooked the last tomatoes from her garden and shook out the sheets in autumn mist. This is a woman's sorrow no man can carry, save for replying sparsely on paper: Dear stranger, from here, the poplars mother me like votive candles —their wicks steadily lit, one-by-one under a rose-gold dusk. When doves coo in the atrium, my faith returns soft-winged and sudden. They linger, peck at the fallen grain — long enough for me to sign off as someone you'd bring home. Two bodies hungry for quiet miracles. She would have loved your paintings, your books—your comfortable silence —like a long refrain, whenever we were too far away to hear the music.

"Self-study is not my discipline—except when she stirs soup counter-clockwise"

— Vikki C., 'P.S. I PRACTISED THE ÉTUDE TODAY' from Through The Looking Glass: An International Portraiture of Mothers (@ballerinibookpress.bsky.social)

#InternationalWomensDay💐

#poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

Zombie Extras Visit 7-11 Every night they return, tripping down the hill in tattered t-shirts, hospital gowns flapping, glucose syrup glistening red across their chins and throats. They seem tired of this death as they pour hazelnut coffees and buy boxes of Sour Patch Kids and chat about what they’ll do once they get back to living: exfoliate the earth off their arms, maybe hold their baby niece, or gnaw a porterhouse steak to the bone. They talk about the way they died today: crossbow bolt, gatling gun. One shows off the tread marks on his blazer where he was flattened by a tank.

And when one of the dead gets a text, she winces at her phone's bright light— “They started filming again,” she groans. “This is why,” one says, “we call the dead ‘late’.” It’s a steep climb, going back. The dead hold onto each other in case one of them slips.

here's my poem "Zombie Extras Visit 7-11," one of three new ones just out from the new journal @bulbregion.bsky.social!

"They seem tired of this death
as they pour hazelnut coffees
and buy boxes of Sour Patch Kids..."

POEM 316: "The birds of the Haworth dead " by LJ Ireton (@literaryvegan.bsky.social)

"Every minute they cry,
so that you look up,
up -
the sky of the sleepers
is screaming alive;
raucous with cemetery rooks
discordant, glorious
blurring"

stonecirclereview.com/the-birds/

#Poem #Poetry

In case you missed it this morning...

postcard of dog with collage and aphorism, writing in German from original sender at bottom

stay tender somehow

a reminder from @dinalrelles.bsky.social and me

I try to not think too much about the dust I'm breathing in.

Two and a half weeks left before our submissions close. We hope you'll join us. For while it's true we're all in the dark in our own way, we're not necessarily alone in that dark. heroinchic.weebly.com

Final reading tonight! And I know a few people who had to head home early, so come to the cat reading even if it says "sold out" y'all!

Five Ponds Writing Festival at Gordon College. March 28th.

fivepondsfestival.org

Every day is a good day to check out some new mags. Here’s some gems
:)

@gonelawn.bsky.social
@the-engine-idling.bsky.social
@paraselenemag.bsky.social
@flowlitmag.bsky.social
@dailydrunkmag.bsky.social
@tinywrenlit.bsky.social
@epistemiclit.bsky.social
@frazzledlit.bsky.social

they are all here, shaking hands, / stepping into embraces

The Designer I told him silently that the voice always comes back. It tells me I will keep losing, that love is a trick life plays before people disappear.

“Maybe he let some lovers stay together and drew others away from the crowd with his spell?”

ICYMI, I’m thrilled to have a short story in @doricliterary.bsky.social 🌼

doric-literary.com/2026/03/01/t...

Anti-Fascist Love Poem Reading JENNIFER A SUTHERLAND CATHERINE ROCKWOOD Reading ADRIAN DALLAS FRANDLE MICHAEL TODD COHEN CARLA SOFIA FERREIRA DOMINIQUE AHKONG HAN VANDERHART JOHNNY CORDOVA ELIZABETH SYLVIA AMORAK HUEY ERIN VACHON JEN ROUSE K. IVER Off Site Baltimore Saturday, March 7|79pm Fells Point | 1640 Thames Street use entrance to: 1636)

TONIGHT, BALTIMORE! #AWP2026

7-9pm 🎉🎉🎉

POEM 315: "The Sky Above, the Brine Below" by Harrison Fisher

"And when the captains of ships
that have famously gone down
find each other, as they always do,
they sit together at the captains’ table,

which, in a moment upended,
seems to rise sideways"

stonecirclereview.com/the-sky-above

#poetry

Where you can find (or avoid) me at AWP today. 🙃🫶

Morningfall I wake, anxious for first milk, the logistics of things I cannot keep. For you on another timescale, halving passion in unequal twos. Spitting its black-eyed seeds in the drain, instead of back to jewelled earth. I worry how you've not written first. How the world eats at our private amber. We’re conditioned to suffer widely, to help the on-screen casualties, but cannot handle the small griefs. Interior winds burying our heads deep into the valley’s neck. I am afraid of turning away from hyacinth and hope. From all that spoils without attention. I cannot come nearer than the fox to the lilac bed, hungry but aware of the latest rage. I’m afraid of straying while men break bread, scheming big wars. Fear easy extinction, like those I hold—whom I’ve never told I am holding. On the river that silvers through, none notice the salmon rush towards joy. My copper-clay coat, warm with potential. Yet sorrow has my tail and snow buries the shortest path to you. Honey hardens in airtight jars. The sweet life, still unreachable as ice freezes the limbs, the tongue. Hear the fridge's dull anthem hum. Its nightly glow on my salty cheek. What preserves longer than God intends? You have not let me go and I fear this extended light will start a new devotion.

"I’m afraid of straying while men break bread, scheming big wars."

'Morningfall' – published at The Book Bag: Poetic Voices.

My thanks to @paulwritespoems.bsky.social for the feature & the honour of this poem being nominated for the @forwardprizes.bsky.social🙏

paulwritespoems.com/category/the...

AWP friends, I'll be at the book fair this morning. And then on my laptop upstairs at a table near the panels until I get my grades done. Come say hi if you have a minute!

PS cat reading tonight! 🐈

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence (1940)