In this three stanza poem, Gordon Smith evolves his use of punctuation to help evolve the flow of the poem to suit the context of the words. The first stanza is one sentence, the only period appearing at the end. The second stanza breaks four lines in with a period, the last line standing alone as another sentence. The last stanza cuts a line, rounding out at four instead of five, and uses more punctuation than the other two combined.

This evolution of the flow into something breaking and more rough follows the tone of reminiscence in the poem. The first stanza is about before the apocalypse, the second about after, but remembering before, the third departs from fond remembrance, and instead illustrates the pain of being alone in a post-apocalyptical world.

How many years since you’ve been touched; eight? Nine?

Since your skin felt skin uncontrolled, with shock.

But for comets, there are no surprise turns—

only birth, arc, spectacle, and return.

This third stanza illustrates the detached nature of the world. While humans have these elements of “uncontrolled, with shock” but the world is like a comet, it just keeps spinning one, age to era to eon. “birth, arc, spectacle, and return.” 

Smith doesn’t just use the amount of punctuation to illustrate the breakdown in perspective and tone, but also what type. The first stanza only makes use of commas and a period, small pauses and a full stop. The second, we add a couple of em-dashes; longer pauses and a sense of isolation. The third, we get a semicolon, question marks, and an em-dash, commas, and periods.

These punctuation caesuras are what break up the text to interrupt the flow,  and create the illustration of the content in the form of this poem.

This poem appears in Palette Poetry.