• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

David Lehman: Ode to Punctuation

May 10, 2011 by PBQ

A poem without punctuation is female.
– Pauline Ambrozy

The comma is female,
The exclamation point male,
The semi-colon is fem bi-curious sub 29 Virginia.

The apostrophe is prosperous, possessive (femme)
The colon looks both ways before crossing the street (m).
The fast-running dash can’t make up his mind
about the curvaceous question mark lurking in the lobby. What to do?
The parenthesis (f, 30) needs attention and keeps interrupting.

Thus the sentence moves
from the solace of day
to the lunacy of night
in a dependent clause beginning “although.”

Although it is past curfew,
the nouns in the woods
conjugate the verbs
unattended by adjectives and adverbs.

And the sentence drives to a climax
and ends in a unisex period..

Filed Under: Contributors 82, Issue 82, Prose, Prose 82 Tagged With: Contributors 82, David Lehman, Prose, Prose 82

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ March Slam Session!

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org