Punctuation+and+Genre


 * justice **

a youth grabbed an old woman’s purse fat with tissues and aspirin and such sundries as old women carry in sagging purse. a desperate youth nice enough not to beat her head bloody into the sidewalk as muggers of the feeble often do for the fun of it I suppose. and he ran up the hill but one of the perennial watchers watched it all from her window. the purseless old woman in slow pursuit yelling such curses as it takes old women a lifetime to learn. but it was too dangerous too futile. the silent watcher knew to call the police who might come and rough up someone they did not like just for the fun of it I suppose. or who would talk polite and feel mad inside and roll their eyes because there was really nothing they could do and there were murderers and assaults to handle. so this silent angry watcher carelessly but carefully dropped flower pots from her fourth-floor windowsill garden. one crashing before one behind and the third hitting him on the head. a geranium I suppose and closed her window while the huffing grateful old woman looked up at the heavens to thank the lord and walked off with her purse laughing when she finally calmed down and leaving the youth to awaken in the blue arms of the law. and do you know two smiling cops walked up all those stairs to warn the watcher that if she weren’t more careful with her plants she would get a ticket for littering. I suppose?

from //The Power of Grammar// (Ehrenworth and Vinton, 2005).