By Joe Perez
i
The cat is breath. The bird is voice.
๐ opens with nothing in it.
๐ is voiced before it is anything.
That is the whole of the quarrel,
and it was settled in the throat,
before the garden, before the grass was green.
ii
๐โ๐ โ no. Look again. ๐โ๐.
๐โ๐.
Two glyphs the same and then the third one frays.
/kรฆt/ and /kรฆtส/: the animal and the act,
one word until the release,
and the release is all the difference
between a thing done
and a thing done raggedly, and slow.
iii
Consider the bird. /bษd/. ๐โสณ๐.
Threshold, gathered, center.
Voiced, and voiced, and voiced.
Nothing in the bird is only air.
The cat begins in air with no voice in it โ
0120, in breath, at the depth.
The garden did not have to be told which was which.
iv
And fast: ๐กโ๐ญ๐.
A thin spreading, an opening forward,
a grooved driving, and a closure at the center.
It stops. ๐ is built to stop.
You cannot hold /fรฆst/. You cannot hold /kรฆt/.
You may hold ๐ญ as long as the lungs allow,
and ๐, and ๐, and the long green nothing
of an afternoon in which nothing is decided โ
but the pounce is assembled out of endings,
which is why it is a pounce
and not a season.
v
โ ๐โ๐ ๐โ๐โ๐ฎ โ ๐โสณ๐ ๐กโ๐ญ๐
Between the article and the cat: โ.
Inside the catching: โ.
Before the bird: โ.
Three times the mouth declined to commit,
and in the whole of the sentence
those are the only places nothing was decided.
The bird was standing in one of them.