In Witness Protection

After another night
of country tunes and Coors

a leather-tanned creature
whose bottle-blonde hair
hangs like straw beneath

a star spangled bandana,
throws her aching leg
over Harley’s
(his real name)
motorcycle

bursitis reminding her
of that other woman
she wants us to forget.

Oh, say can you see
the woman she used to be?

Joan Wiese Johannes has four chapbooks, including Sensible Shoes, the 2009 winner of the John and Miriam Morris Chapbook contest sponsored by the AL Poetry Society, and He Thought the Periodic Table Was a Portrait of God published by Finishing Line Press. Winner of the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest and the Triad Contest Sponsored by WI Fellowship of Poets, her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. She co-edited the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter, 2019 issue of Bramble with her husband Jeffrey. They live in Port Edwards, WI