It is not especially tall, rising to 1.9 metres, and it is notably thin, just 0.23 metres at its narrowest dimension, giving it a blade-like quality when viewed from certain angles. Its long axis runs northeast to southwest, an orientation that may or may not have carried astronomical or territorial significance for the people who raised it, though no record survives to say so plainly.

Standing stones of this kind are scattered across Cork and Kerry in considerable numbers, and they remain among the more enigmatic monuments in the Irish archaeological landscape. Most are thought to date broadly to the Bronze Age, erected somewhere between four thousand and three thousand years ago, though precise dating is difficult without associated finds or organic material. They are sometimes found in loose alignment with other stones or with burial monuments, and sometimes they appear entirely alone, as this one does. The stone at Cusloura is described as subrectangular in plan, meaning its cross-section is roughly rectangular rather than tapered or irregular, which suggests some degree of deliberate shaping or at least careful selection from available material. At just over a metre wide and less than a quarter of a metre thick, it would have required considerable effort to transport and erect, which implies it mattered to someone, for reasons that remain entirely opaque.