Ann Lewis
Sitting in the paisley armchair Ann Lewis
at the small town bank,
you wouldn’t budge.
I’m waiting for Bill Clinton.
He’s taking me to Hawaii.
We’re gonna be married.
Loan officers swarm around you,
bump into your sharded reality
with talk of what you used to be—
Sunday pearls, beauty shop hair,
someone’s wife, someone’s mother.
The men in blue rang your wrists, metal rings
one by one. It took three of them to take you.
Men in white coats, you in polyester slippers,
pills ravish your cortex and bring you back.
It takes two weeks. You come home.
At what used to be a family table, you sit alone.
Ann Lewis