Alphabet Shell

Oil on linen 
6 × 6 inches

Conus spurius, what does it say — this shield you held 
as long as you could against a world that would grind a
palm of words to grains?

When I hold it to my ear, a voice appears as if beyond the 
waves of static on a gramophone. Is it singing?

How small it seems, this story of growth and hunger 
told in golden hieroglyphs. Dots and dashes blotch 
the spires, the beaded ribs. I hold it like a
disappearing language someone saved from a kind of ocean 
intent on churning all sense to glittering sand.