Dave Bonta starts with the nicknames old typesetters gave the exclamation mark: a gasper, a screamer, a dog's cock. Then he steps back and says the shape is far older than type. The poem becomes a long list of things that look like an exclamation mark: a trembling dry stalk, a mud-dauber's tube, a slug's trail, a severed finger on ice, a pencil, a gas flare burning at night. Some of these are gentle, some strange, some a little shocking, and the odd mix is part of the fun.
The speaker seems delighted by how the mark turns up in nature, in objects, even in bones and money. The mood is curious and playful, with a hint of darkness in the severed finger and the fossil. The last stanza turns to a legend: the Latin word for joy, written vertically, with a big I balanced on a full belly. That gives the mark a warm, happy origin, and the poem ends on a sense of fullness and joy.