Here’s a wonderful exuberant poem, a throw your head back and howl poem, a laugh so hard with someone that you both can’t breathe and that’s all part of the fun poem, a dance all night and then go out for eggs and bacon and biscuits with gravy poem. This poem smiles at drunk people in the street and flirts just a little bit with everyone in the room because why not? Enough of life is about stopping. And sometimes the opposite of stopping is not going too far; sometimes it’s taking that one more step to the yippee.
Many thanks to Seattle poet Elizabeth Austen for her generous permission to share it with you here. You can also find it at The Writer’s Almanac (and hear it read by Garrison Keillor).
Enjoy
On Punctuation
by Elizabeth Austen
not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty
“On Punctuation” by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010. Reprinted with the poet’s permission.
Great poem! Voluptuous uncertainty… I’m going to remember that line.