I am so excited to present The Dawn Review’s second issue! This reading period, we received more than 1,400 submissions, and were able to provide free feedback to nearly 200 pieces of writing. When considering submissions, we continued to champion pieces that erased the boundaries between prose and poetry– between the natural and the manufactured– between dream and waking. As always, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has helped to make this dream of a magazine into a reality. 

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Issue 2 was compiled in the winter, and it bears the frost-tinged shadows of the season. In “tenor,” Shana Blatt tells us, “the ship of theseus…is no ark.” But ​as individuals living lives of increasing vastness, we are consumed with minute constructions and reconstructions: in “As a Rule, You Promise to Appease This Child,” the speaker is “a doll. with an amorphous/ heart pieced and stacked on /the saucer like a beehive.” Meanwhile, in Gemma Trimble’s “Laodamia” and Stephen Wunderli’s “A Real Fourth of July,” the seasons wash us in deceptive warmth, with generous tides whose erosion is only evident in the aftermath.  

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According to Elizabeth Ip’s speaker in “Votum, “all love stories end beyond the coast.” Yet ultimately, Issue 2 brings to life the absence that blossoms past the coast– the meanings ebbing into each other at the edge of every darkness. Terri Mullholland devotes her piece “Insomnia Dreams” to the barrier between the waking world and an ever-elusive world of dreams. In “Night Parable,” Ava Chen tells us that, “Overhead, aliens have eerily even luck in poker/ and veer off course, zip by Earth,/a comet brighter than blood.” The voices of this issue show us that even shadows are refractions– whether we wade into them unknowingly or carve them for ourselves. 

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All of my winters, for as long as I can remember, tend to coagulate in my mind as a blank spot. However, working on Issue 2 has added so much shape and substance to this winter in particular. I am so proud of every piece we are presenting to you, and I hope you enjoy! 

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Sincerely,
Ziyi Yan
Editor in Chief