She’s willing to admit bad spelling
has never killed anyone.
Still, she finds simple mistakes
almost painful: an apostrophe
misplaced in a plural possessive
or, worse, in the form of /its/ when it’s
not needed. She likes plain rules,
/i/ before /e/ and hyphenation
according to Webster. With grammar
she’s less picky, more inclined
to let things slide, though she knows
that slope can be slippery.
Give some an inch and they’ll take
a dangling modifier.
She understands her penchant
for pointing out flaws is tiring.
At times she tires of it herself
and wishes it were like a light switch
she could flick on and off. No such luck.
So she tries to be content
with the constant itch for correction.
Besides, where would the reader be without her?
When, instead of smoking in public,
he suddenly finds himself smoking
in /pubic/, who will step in
to put out the painful, embarrassing fire?