Are You Just an Ordinary Comma?

The Poems
Christmas, 1997 / No. 1
By Susan Swan

I never liked grammar rules

until you schooled me

in the punctuation mark.

What bothers me, though,

is this: Are you just an ordinary comma

or a colon denoting < !! # $ + = * ???

Susan Swan lives in Sussex-Ulster. She is the author of Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With (Somerville, 1996) and The Wives of Bath (Knopf, 1993), which was adapted into the 2001 film Lost and Delirious. Last updated summer, 2002.