The Comma’s Complaint
(Jan. 3, 2008) The Comma’s Complaint
By David Holper
How little understood I am in this wide world
How students and others uninitiated wrestle with me
Thinking that for every breath they take
I somehow should put down this coffee cup and magically appear.
What if you’ve been running late to class, I want to ask them
Should commas pepper your prose until the page
bursts into flame?
Or equally bad, they confuse me with apostrophes
And suspect that with all things plural
I should shoulder the weight
As with one’s and two’s, so they think with dog’s and cat’s.
And who among them understands the difference
Between an essential or nonessential phrase
A cumulative or coordinate series of adjectives?
No, it’s beyond them, that is painfully clear
So I will arise and go now
To meet a semi colon I am fond of
And rather than worry about all this fiddle anymore
We will spend the afternoon in her apartment overlooking the park
Stroking each other’s
Ink fed flanks
Sure in the knowledge of one another’s uses and usefulness
And sure in the knowledge of how to best form sentences
By placing ourselves
Into one another.
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