LETTER from the EDITORS
How I long to make an eternity of the liminal (Olivia Cronk, “Divulge”)
The advantage to standing in the doorway is that you can see both rooms, while also gaining the knowledge of the spaces of resistance, silence, listening. Attention to being ‘between’ is one way to locate the murmur of our intersections with place (Fred Wah, Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene)
Pulpmouth was conceived in a small purple house riddled with holes and swarming wasps, and was later born on October 31st, 2018, when the moon was waning. We never wanted to be full. Today, during the spring equinox, we are eager to share with you the sublimities, artifacts, half-lives, ephemeras, appendages, reliquaries, and skeletons that we have gathered and prepared on the ritualistic journey-after-birth, the journey into and through eternity, if there is such a thing.
This issue tells many stories at once, of birth and dying and of the in-between, where we listen like dust on the skin. The pages are wet, but holding. The doors opening and closing. how am i to kiss the underground? / i look to doorframes for little coffins (Elana Lev Friedland). The home is its own animus and the doors / won’t stay closed (Peter Giebel). Tracing the interstices and blind passages, we wonder how long it will take before someone comes knocking (Hillary Leftwich), and sometimes the waiting can feel like an eternity.
This is the realm of doors folding like an accordian.
We move like voyeurs or nomads from room to room to room, each site an installation to time / swimming beneath the depths. We are like fish exiting pisces season, moving toward total dilution. The end and beginning. The liminal tether. We are here and there, surfing the gaps.
Dear readers, we wish you everything on your journey from end to beginning and back. We are so thankful for the support from our contributors partnered with the combined presences and curatorial ideas of our editorial team.
Sincerely,
Pulpmouth editors
Rachel Franklin Wood
Bailey Pittenger
Emily Barton Altman
Julia Madsen
Evelyn Hampton, editor emeritus
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