Preserving Things - Camilla Basham

The real love

I always keep a secret;
the best part of me,
veiled:
hidden away
behind heaving breasts,
trembling lips
and hands
intertwined
in a tense tangle
of bitten nails
paper cuts
and palm lines
that foretell a long future.
I pray though I am an atheist.
I party though I am a loner.
I laugh though I want to cry.
And I lie.
Oh, how I lie.

Preserving Things - Chris Callaghan

The Family museum is open nine to five, seven days a week, excluding holidays, occasional sanity-preserving week-ends at the lake, and annual trips to Mexico and other exotic locals.

Admittance is free unless you are a dysfunctional Family member, in which case the cost is approximately $160,000.00. This amount includes both local and federal taxes and all pending legal fees.

Please keep in mind that a signature of Insurance Waivers is compulsory before admittance. There are free maps to this historic residence at the door, along with a semi-complete list of the priceless contents of each room, including the infamous fifty year old orange Chinese couch that nobody in the family has been able to throw away for decades.

Please follow your guide closely and listen up. She will be giving a fascinating narrative of the glorious history of each and every member of the family and their impact on the local economy. You won’t want to miss a word.

There are identification plaques throughout the house and grounds, listing the common names, followed by the Latin names, of every plant and piece of furniture, and the approximate dates they were added to the collection. If you have any questions, please ask your tour guide. She knows it all.

The next tour will begin in ten minutes. The line forms at the top of those stairs where your guide will lead you down to the very bowels of the residence, the three thousand square foot basement, where many of the un-catalogued items are stored in a climate controlled environment. You might think of it as the Smithsonian archives of Las Vegas.

We’ve tried to maintain the exact placement of certain stacks of boxes and precariously balanced piles of furniture just as they were when the previous owners departed this world. Touch them at your own risk.

From the basement we will be proceeding directly into the rear yard. Please watch your step as the management is not responsible for errant piles of cat shit, or vicious aberrant cactus spines. After a leisurely stroll through the gardens, we will make a short stop at the world famous guest house, where there is a unisex bathroom for your convenience.

You will also have a chance to view the exact location where the amazing orange two man submarine was stored. Unfortunately it is no longer part of the collection. However, there are plenty of color pictures of it for your viewing pleasure.

From there we will proceed to the ground floor of the residence itself. Your guide will be happy to open any of the multitudinous cabinets you may find interesting – where you can view, among other things—the world’s largest collection of antique Tupperware, and priceless textiles from the 1950’s, including bed sheets of every size.

Our final stop today will be the cavernous work shop where you will be able to peruse the massive collection of tools, both useable and broken. An extra added attraction is the screw and bolt collection to rival any other of its kind.

Don’t forget to visit our gift shop after the tour, where for a small price you too can buy copies of even the tackiest articles and the most sordid family papers.

Also – due to the high cost of maintenance and upkeep – Today Only – there will be a Once in a Lifetime chance to bid on some of the furnishings at the Estate Sale scheduled for six pm. Please have your checkbooks ready. We accept MasterCard, Visa, and American Express, as well as cash.

The management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, regardless of age, sex, race, or Familial connection, and retains the right to sue at will.

Thank you for your attention. Please enjoy your tour.

Preserving Things - Jeff Thomas

Tough to preserve your relationships when
the emotional tool closest at hand is the equivalent of a flame thrower.
one could argue that, as in nature,
you’re clearing the field for new and healthier growth.
yeah, I suppose by accident, but
that’s not what I’m shooting for.
scorched earth, baby!
does this thing turn up any higher?

Preserving Things - Jessica Maria Tuccelli

Under the glare of midday sun, the bat squirmed as though it were alive, but Maggie knew it was only the maggots that made its chest move that way. Her fascination with dead things made her fit right in with her three brothers. Why only a week before, Paddy, the eldest at fourteen, had drudged a flour sack from their quarry. I AM the resurrection and the life. When he opened the dripping bag, she hadn’t shirked away but peered in with the same primal curiosity due any boy. INTO thy hands I commend my spirit for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, thou God of truth.

Inside, four kittens, calicos, not more than six weeks old, lay in a heap; dead of course. Maggie hadn’t wondered who might have done such a thing. She knew. She was only eight, but since their da had died, play time for the Mulligan brood had become a part of the past too. So far, they had worked in the quarry every day that summer, and it gave Maggie plenty of time to learn the habits and pleasures of the two young men whom her mother had hired to handle the derrick and the galamander.

After Paddy gave her the flour sack (he was generous that way), she had lifted each kitten out, one by one, cradling each one’s head so it wouldn’t flop about. I KNOW that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God. They couldn’t have been dead for long. Their tiny bodies weren’t yet bloated, though their tongues had turned that awful blue. Their scent hadn’t bothered her either, that strange mix of rotten meat and something cloying and fruit sweet that Maggie knew was decay.

Though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God. She dug them each a grave next to Da, in the hill behind the house, scooping out the damp black soil with her hands. She dug until the black turned to a dry grey, and clumps of quartz and feldspar crumbled between her fingers. Before she placed each kitten in its grave, she named it and blessed it. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. She even stroked their bellies. Their fur, now stiff with granite sludge, had bristled against her palm.

She would bless and bury the bat too, when it came time. For now, she left it alone on the warm ground to let maggots do what maggots do and went back to work in the quarry.

Preserving Things - John Fetto

Hawley wasn’t destroying, he was preserving things. The more weapons caches they found, the less villages leveled, the less villagers murdered, the less Americans dead. Just take away the weapons, find the cache, call in the air force, let them light them up. They watched and found the coordinates, and the weapons disappeared. Defang the snake. That’s what the Colonel said. Like stopping a child from hurting himself.

They were so good, Willie, Sandman and Jaybird. And they were all about the mission. A good mission. That’s why they were picked. To find the head of the snake. And cut it off. So what if it was off the map, in a country where they weren’t technically allowed to be. When the helicopter touched down, they slipped into the jungle, so full of purpose. Not a word spoken as they walked. Everyone knew what they were going to do.

Everything went as planned until they crossed the river, moving through the ridges, climbing up the ridge. That’s when Hawley stopped, and the team stopped. Hawley wasn’t even sure why. The forest was too quiet. And then he found out why.

Preserving Things - Melody Cryns

As I sit here amid boxes and chaos waiting for the movers who are running late, I think of all the stuff I have – that I just got done packing late last night. While I threw out what seemed like reams of paper which will go into paper recycling, I also kept stuff as well – all the pictures, of course, the post cards, cards I’ve received, letters, anything that has to do with music goes into the “keep” pile. Oh yes, and any work that was critiqued in a creative writing class – that also goes in the “keep” file.

Then I packed my file folders – and this time, I thought – this time for sure I’m going to put everything into the file folders so that I can find exactly what I need! I have some things in file folders, but not all. Then I look at the stacks of boxes filled with books, which I just cannot part with – they’re like old friends waiting for me to look at them again. Sometimes it’s years before I’ll look at a given book – like some of the children’s books I still have. But one day, something will possess me to take out say The Four Story Mistake by Eleanor Enright, and Ill glance at it, flip through the now yellowed pages and then start reading, suddenly transformed and in a time tunnel – in New York City in the 1940’s with the four kids in the Melendy family, two boys and two girls.

They were my very favorite family to read about when I was a kid – their first book was called The Saturdays, which I still own – and it was about these four kids living in a brownstone in New York City who get this idea to start a Saturday Club and each kid gets their pooled allowance and has a special adventure in New York City by themselves. But lots of stuff happens, of course – and well, they are the most wonderful family. And I felt as if I was right there with Randy in the Art Museum, and with all four of the kids at Central Park where their row boat tips over in a lake. And poor Oliver running too far from home to catch a dog. In The Four Story Mistake, the kids must move with their Dad from their beloved city out to the country somewhere in New England – and as I read a chapter while I was supposed to be packing, I realized why I love those books so much – the sense of place. The author puts us right there in New York City with those kids who are all mad about having to move away from their lifelong home in New York City – we’re taken on the trip right along with those kids and their beloved Cuffy, and when we get to their new house, called the four story mistake, we can see the funny old house with a cupola on top and all the surrounding lands…I always felt like I was right there with them.

Ooops! What am I doing? I’m supposed to finish up the packing, not reading a book…stop! The movers will be here any moment. I can’t find the coffee filters and I need to make coffee badly.

As of this afternoon, we will be living at the new place. We already have the keys and I went over there again yesterday to get a feel for it. The living room is big – and that’s good…the kitchen is big, and the bedrooms are pretty good-sized, not huge, not small. There are ceiling fans in every room, even the kitchen – and the kitchen is total old school with older white cabinets and the really good tile that you just don’t see anymore on the countertops. The table and chairs will fit in the kitchen. I also loved the windowsill above the sink, the double sink and the little shelves in the corner to put things on…I don’t remember the last time I had a windowsill above the sink. The bathroom also has that really nice old-fashioned tile and well, it’s just gonna have to be home, no doubt about it now.

We’re ready.

Firing a Gun - Rachel Debaere

I am playing in my father’s musty office, a dug out really, beneath our house. He calls it “la cave,” which it is. There are a few old bottles of wine lined up against a side wall. In the far corner, there is a steamer trunk with some of my grandmother’s belongings: clothing – including a scandalous, black silk dress she had designed herself, with pink tulle for the underskirt; a glazed, black ceramic plate – her family tree artfully written on it; and old notebooks in which she had recorded her expenditures, visits with dignitaries, and the names of her husbands – including her wedding dates, divorces and their deaths.

My father sits at his old wooden desk in the center of the tiny room. The desk has a glass top, and under the glass, reside a few school photos of my sister and me, one of his mother when she was a belle, and none of my mother. The calendar on nailed to a wall stud behind the desk is on January. The naked girl with smooth skin is poised on her hands and knees, her beautiful brown eyes turned to her left, facing the camera. I love being in this private sanctuary of my father’s.

My mother has never entered this place.

I am on the concrete floor which my father poured one weekend after many nights and weekends of digging the space out. He had driven wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt down to the creek for months to make this small room, he keeps locked with a padlock.

He opens the desk drawer on the right, where, in the front, rest a row of number two pencils, all lined in the same direction, pencil points to the left, virgin erasers on the left. He pulls the drawer further out, has to move his chair back a little to make room, and from the back, takes out a black pouch. He remains still, holding the pouch – gently, carefully, thoughtfully.

I look up from the floor where I have been tracing my finger over the outline of my handprint and the year, 1-9-6-6, which we had etched in November when the concrete was still wet.

“Daddy, what’s that?” I ask. “What’s in there?”

“C’est mon pistolet,” he replies and pulls a small pistol from the bag.