Detroit Annie, Hitchhiking- 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.