TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Idioms and common sayings communicate so much about where we come from and who we come from. I come from the Midwest, and my family’s roots here are deep. I grew up with a lot of what I’d call Midwestern folk sayings, though no doubt some of them traveled from other regions — perhaps up from the South or down from New England.

“You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” is something I’m sure I’ve heard my mother say. It’s as if she has a little wooden recipe box in her mind, filled with 3x5 cards with beloved sayings written on them. As if she can flip through all the cards and pull the one she needs for the moment.

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” was always a popular one directed at me growing up. Fine, I was a mouthy kid. I suppose some mouthy kids become writers. 

Another popular one was “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” That one came in handy, I’m sure, when one of my sisters did something to me, and I did something to get her back.

I also remember my mom saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” I half-jokingly say that to my children now, when I’m staying up too late but I want them to get a good night’s sleep, or when I’m eating chips but I’d rather them snack on carrot sticks. Of course I know that what I’m doing is more of an example than what I’m saying. Actions speak louder than words. 

I have my own recipe box of sayings, many inherited from older family members, but often I use shorthand: The devil you know. Where there’s a will. Out of the frying pan. A bird in the hand. These sayings are so common, I don’t feel the need to quote them in full. I trust the listener to get the gist. I trust them to fill in the rest.

Today’s poem begins with a little advice that made me smile because of its sauciness, and the poem unfolds into such a rich, detailed portrait — not a portrait of a lady, but of ladies, shedding old expectations and claiming new power.

Ladies' Arm Wrestling Match at the Blue Moon Diner
by Jenny Johnson

My grandma always told me if life gives you lemons
throw ‘em away. And so, we loosen. Shuffle off sore tendons.

Mondays. Insults catcalled out Chevy windows.
Clinking whiskey glasses, we wipe away sweat and old flames.

All I ever found in the gravel was the paper body,
what the garter snake shed. Take off that old suit, tonight.

Even as your good arm shudders to the mat, like the moon
meeting the mouth of the Shenandoah. Take off that old suit.

In new skin, come back again and again. Own this acreage,
this new ground ripping under rolled sleeves.

“Ladies' Arm Wrestling Match at the Blue Moon Diner” by Jenny Johnson from IN FULL VELVET © 2017 Jenny Johnson. Used by permission of Sarabande Books.