X marks the spot

O how I’ve lived
in the shadowbox
of forms. Kept

my rose-chest neat and ordered, full of horns.
Their mocking notes slide around inside there.

Rocking boats dive
into the water, driven out
from the reaches
of a pebble-shore, right

into a muck-walkway. The light is never
confused. It clips the box I carry in two—

lifted away by the glass and tilted back
into it, half-
swallowed, illiterate.