by Judy Grahn
Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken artery
and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with great
dangling black feathers, but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it,
simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water are phonies,
or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very cool
and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fisherman think perhaps she’s a fish,
but they’re all fools.
She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid.
Now when she smells danger,
she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you don’t mind.
The common woman is as common as the reddest wine.
