Volume I
Three Boxes by Chris Greiner
There are three boxes on the top shelf in the hall closet behind the framed baby pictures my mom gave me when they sold the family home. In those boxes I keep a collection of small metal and plastic toy animals, a tiny brown squirrel with a real fur tail, some He-Men, a St. Christopher statue with a broken staff, a Mickey Mouse on a tricycle, a blue cat wrestling a giant ball of blue string. Stuff like that. Even though I’ve moved four times in the last eight years, I always take those boxes with me and find a new closet in which to put them.
Now, before you think that these are simply a collection of nostalgic keepsakes from my childhood, I had better tell you their story. One day between Christmas and New Year’s when I was about eight, I snuck into the living room and removed the miniature camel that stood next to the three kings on that green felt hill in the family crèche. In its place I put Gumby’s horse, the one I’d painted to look like a pinto pony. When Dad passed by the crèche on the chestof-drawers in the family living room that evening after work, he removed the horse and put the camel back in its traditional position.
He told everyone at dinner that he didn’t want to know who did it, but he thought it was best that whoever did went to confession. Years later, after I moved out of my college apartment and was living in a place with a real living room, I set up a small crèche at Christmas time. I’d picked out a version that looked a lot like the one my parents always set up. But just for fun, I added a couple of other animals to the regular cast of characters, like a horse Three Boxes with a shiny saddle and one of his front feet awkwardly raised in the air for some reason. At a Christmas party that year, friends seemed to like it. So the next year, I added some more animals and a plastic He-Man because I thought Baby Jesus needed a bodyguard, with Mickey and Minnie Mouse as His playmates.
My Christmas parties grew popular, and the crèche was a centerpiece. Soon friends were bringing me various odd little critters that they’d found in the bottom of a toy box, saying shyly, “I thought you’d like this.” The crowd around the manger grew to epic size. One year a small band of Army men attempted to hold back my cartoon mob by lining themselves up along the little barnyard fence I had installed. One year in New Orleans, Mary had twins, because I’d won this other tiny baby in a King Cake that year.
Another year at one of those Christmas parties, somebody replaced Mary with a naked Barbie. I took it down when I saw it, and put Mary back. It made Joseph look even more nervous than usual. I never figured out who did it, but I hope they went to confession. But nowadays I live in a studio apartment. It’s pretty small, and I don’t even have room for a chest-of-drawers on which to put my crèche. The first year I moved in, I took the boxes down at Christmas and set them on the kitchen table. They stayed there a while, and I moved them to the side each time I made dinner. I moved them again when I got down my books and notebooks for writing.
I’ve different friends now anyway. I think they’re busy. So those same three boxes are on a top shelf up in the hall closet. I haven’t opened them in the last few years. I usually spend my Christmases at my sister’s house in Spokane, so I never think much about setting up a crèche at my place. And though I’ve really no plans to set one up, I can’t throw out those boxes. I can’t part with them.
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True Cost by J. Robert Parks
I walk up twenty-eight steps to a science exhibit on healthy living.
Confronted by the not entirely unfamiliar fact that french fries are
bad for me.
550 calories. Shrug.
But then I see the sign that tells me I’d have to walk up and down
those twenty-eight stairs for 120 minutes to burn off all those calories.
Two hours of stair climbing!
We want it. We need it.
But would we want it or need it if we recognized the true cost?
Full tank of gas for the 22mph vehicle.
Airline ticket to Paris.
2800 sq. ft. house with the A/C on and cords in every outlet.
Closets full of crap we rarely use or wear.
All paid for by credit card as if the magic plastic paid for things
out of thin air.
But the true cost:
Steadily dwindling supplies.
Steadily increasing temperatures.
Pelicans and fish drowning in brown sludge and gasping for
oxygen.
We want it. We need it.
But would we want it or need it if we recognized the true cost?
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All Things Must Go by Caren Beilin
All things must go.
Deck furniture, architecture-themed coffee table books (Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, differentmovements of Frank Lloyd Wright), a never-used hammock,
soiled bathroom towels and towelettes, some with the monograms ripped out like Oedipal eyes ripped out, appliances with dull blades from blending birds, the canary an ephedrine sun, half-filled fragrances (Estee, Calvin, Hermes, assortments of homemade musks, plus our other concoctions),
red marbles that are Mars in a board game about outer space, crystal decanters, several black photographs signed by Bill Clinton, old watches and plastic pansies that are supposed to go in a clear display dish, new garbage bags, a sundry of taxidermed items (deer, birds, squirrels, bears, rabbits, dogs, unidentified),
whips, whips, and more whips,
books on cannibalism, old Brainteezers, two dull shovels, books (lots from the canon, including too many copies of “War and Peace”), “Dwells,” and a big stack of “Art in Americas” (some with the pictures of penises cut out),
interesting glass bottles and fun random mugs, our daughter’s poetry chapbooks, How-to books (basic wiring, water torture, build a deck, 1001 braids, canning fruit, jarring meat, curbing), framed museum posters (Lichtenstein at MoMA, Botero at SAM),
an assortment of musical equipment and soundproofing strips, a ripped and shitted-on mattress, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, women’s shoes, men’s shoes, women’s jewelry, men’s jewelry, women’s contraceptives, men’s contraceptives, used.
