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The Common Women Poems, II. Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80

By Judy Grahn Judy Grahn

She’s a copperheaded waitress,

tired and sharp-worded, she hides

her bad brown tooth behind a wicked

smile, and flicks her ass

out of habit, to fend off the pass

that passes for affection.

She keeps her mind the way men

keep a knife—keen to strip the game

down to her size. She has a thin spine,

swallows her eggs cold, and tells lies.

She slaps a wet rag at the truck drivers

if they should complain. She understands

the necessity for pain, turns away

the smaller tips, out of pride, and

keeps a flask under the counter. Once,

she shot a lover who misused her child.

Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced

and given the child away. Like some isolated lake,

her flat blue eyes take care of their own stark

bottoms. Her hands are nervous, curled, ready

to scrape.

The common woman is as common

as a rattlesnake.

Judy Grahn, “The Common Women Poems: II. Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006). Copyright © 2008 by Judy Grahn. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.

Source: love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006) (Red Hen Press, 2008)

Biography

Poet, activist, and scholar Judy Grahn was born in Chicago and grew up in New Mexico. She joined the Air Force but was discharged at 21 for being openly gay. A central member of the west coast feminist poetry movement of the 1970s, Grahn received a PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies. In a 2009 essay for the Boston Review on the poetry of the women’s movement, poet Honor Moore spoke of hearing Grahn read her . . .

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