Shadowplay 2026 Issue 4 - Jenn Beachler;Mary Meriam;University of Ark Literary Publications

Editorial
-a cento using the works from Shadowplay Issue 4

The brown thrush signals end of day,
after a whole life building, to be called a ruin.
Your visions droop and wallow, sticky weeping
wounds all black and tarred, the remains
of what they assumed to be impending doom.

A globe in the branches turning and burning
brightly into the deep heat of that day
...faint cries coming over the water, along
the unpaved country road, kicking up dust.

Your curse cut me, and through the scabs,
clamped inside the jaws of life, I wrest
my sleeves, their dead and dried up leaves
curly at the base. Jagged slivers spew out
and tinkle. They would be uprooted.

On the pavement like heavy rain,
I was mute with the muteness
of a flamboyance of trees. Silence
changes shape to begin anew
where we went all wrong.

And then at her feet of ivory and ice,
my shadow crosses snow, with a distance
as vast as that which isolates the stars,
a new brittleness in my chest
translating tales to blank-faced stares.

Let's not talk of ghosts, though.
I hear them moaning a deep,
continuous roar, a thing of beauty
in an unbeautiful environment.

I've felt myself morphing into another being,
pointing toward a small silhouette.
Stems push through broken stones
of the mirror surface, having trudged through
the downpour framed in the doorway.

We're gliding through a passageway,
the souls off to mourning songs
and hunger, litter strewn, litter cleared,
the leaves shaggy like billy goats.

And I, off to perch into something else.
My rusted ribs cave, cracking like the rattling
of small stones, the skywards swoop
of my movement on cobalt-sheened
wings. Hope, the birds are still calling.

Jenn Beachler
Editor-in-Chief of Shadowplay