Shadowplay is a kinetic act; there is always movement-movement between the quiet throes of midnight and the buoyancy of the sun. We mimic those same silhouettes that waltz across our ceilings or drawl along our driveways. We at Shadowplay want to publish a magazine that is home for diverse voices anywhere on their writing journey, an almanac of poems and stories that can help bring clarity to the light and dark of the human condition. Issue 2, we feel, embodies this.

We have a widespread range of authors-from the United States, England, Ireland, Canada, and Japan-who have all spent time, intimate and fleeting, with their own darkness, and have, in turn, created their own luminescence. Diane Webster and John Russell give us quick echoes of masks and murmurations, while Kevin Novalina weaves a slow-burning tale of inevitability and resolve. Jennifer Lagier and John Brantingham each spend a brief, romanticized moment watching the wings of birds. Our authors dance equally around the surreal and the grounded-puppets and ghosts; violets and lightning; a map of the stars; a carving of colors. We invite you into our second issue and hope that you too will get lost in the shadows that we have cast on these pages.

"Take a step back and I become something else."
-Donald Zirilli, "The Opening"

"I keep driving through the night / but the night pushes back"
-Sylvia Foster, "I'm gonna drink about you for a while"

Christian Chase Garner
Editor-in-Chief of Shadowplay