"Demarcations," by Karl Elder
Demarcations
by Karl Elder

The Hyphen
Had you a whole line
of them you'd have your own train.
Imagine the freight.

The Colon
Eyes of a dead man
lying on his side, looking
into a bright light.

The Comma
Ah, giant embryo
with tail, what say you - yin or
yang, you little shrimp.

The Semicolon
A Spanish peanut,
a cashew - which's the best fit
for the appendix?

The Question Mark
Eerie character -
he whose lobe of an artist's
left ear is severed.

The Exclamation Point
Dah-dit. A signal
in Morse code turned on end: N,
you must solve for it.

The Period
How we've come to draw
with such sheer economy
the perfect circle.

From The Parallel Press poetry chapbooks series



Haiku sequences are fairly common in Japanese poetry -- there's even a name for them, which I have of course forgotten. This one seems to be structured more like an Elizabethan sonnet sequence, though.

Also, there are not nearly enough poems about punctuation.