Boxfirmations, 2026

Boxfirmations, 2026

Another box piece. Text strip-mined off corrugated broadsides.

When I talk about the text on boxes I talk about the mingling language of seduction and violence. They congregate, seemingly at odds. Violence is woven into the instructions for how to handle a box. There is always a right way to do something to a box, and a wrong way. Do not crush. Do not stack. Do not cut. And for the contents within the box: One must keep refrigerated, handle like ice cream, handle like eggs. Everything is fragile, always, even when it is not. Once it goes into a box, it assumes the precious fragility of glass. There are knives printed everywhere across a box: blades with short handles. Group lifts are always preferable (use your legs, not your back). The most amazing part of box language is that—if you are to believe the box—every single unique box definitely holds the most amazing precious wonderful cargo ever to be boxed. The ultimate, sweetest, sexiest broccoli. The most premium pleasurable perishable strawberries, baby carseat, or gas grill. The freshest, goodest, greatest, radiant, premium crinkle cut potato fries. Et cetera. The alphabet of box desire is dizzying: a language of eternal anticipation and longing for that which is invisibly sheathed within.