words have gone to sleep inside my head and yet my mind, distant, stays awake at night unable to let go of thoughts of my body I count the points of touch on my skin, locale of memory, but feel the absence of my husband lying next to me asleep in a different city and while the baby’s breaths are deep and steady my eyes sandy the whirring of words never stops and I do not know if it is the curse of being a writer, the curse of being a mother or the curse of being alive but as the light seeps in earth spinning away from its night at the edge of day I fall into a dream.
Untethered to one place, language or format Close Distance, a poetics journal, exists in between and takes shape through connections. For its third edition, created while in residence at Maple St. Construct, Close Distance invited seven artists and writers to respond to the sentence, “Words have gone to sleep inside my head: the promise of a waterfront and the breath of distance,” and to send their response to Maple St. Construct via postal mail. All sent in items were copied fifty times. Regardless of their format an (interpreted) duplicate was made and placed inside a USPS box, the cover or vessel of the publication, culminating in an edition of fifty alongside. The content you will encounter here is a digital rendering of the publication. While Close Distance journal usually originates in an online format and is then translated into print, this issue, perhaps a B-side issue, due to its nature as a mail and copy art issue, began in printed matter and intends to weave the physicality of language and location together. The unbound, boxed publication, is in Close Distance fashion, decided complete while in process; accepting a delayed and missing contribution as part of the risk of sending things via postal mail.
Close Distance would like to thank Maple Street Construct for the time, space and resources provided to make this issue and further thinking about the journal possible; Maritza Estrada and Trey Moody for all the conversations; and Annie Dovali for making elsewhere feel like home. Thank you, thank you.
CLOSE DISTANCE 