Tag: Divorce

Lines from the State-Required Divorced Parents Seminar by Scott Withiam

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Lines from the State-Required Divorced Parents Seminar

Divorce. No one wants to be there, so not here, either, at
The State-Required Divorced Parents Seminar. Before it begins,
Half those attending slump low as possible in cushy tablet-arm folding chairs.
The other half hyper-survey the room like prairie dogs. Not for danger,
For new mates, fresh burrows, I suppose, the ideal being
To expand community. Before we even get started,
Someone in our group mutters, “Given no choice but to attend,”—
No legal divorce papers if we don’t— “this seminar reeks of implication,
More, condemnation. It benefits the state most, not us.” If not the state,
At least benefits the contracted couple’s counselor that runs this seminar.
He stops passing out business cards (for his practice), states he applauds honesty,
But he wants to make it clear? “This seminar isn’t to say that
You’re wrong!” he says. “It’s critical you know that, but to be fair,
Great ideas, like many marriages, can be poorly tended to,
And then, relationships unchecked, sour. That isn’t and won’t be the case here.
This seminar is established and thoroughly proven to help stabilize families.”
If that’s the case, Why is this seminar taking place
In a technical college classroom doubling as a lab, and doubling again
As a fallout shelter, with a huge Periodic Table hanging on the wall
Behind the lectern, in which, at this distance, the elements’ defined boxes are apparent,
But the electron model potentials are too small to see? “If we’re being honest here,”
The counselor says, “this isn’t about you. It has to do, though,
With all of us.” Well, maybe that’s where we should begin, I think,
But the counselor has leaped to, “That one little detail
Our children most need to know; what is it?” Eyes in the room lock straight ahead;
Lips compress. Time has frozen. Electrons don’t jump rings and move closer
Or farther away. The science of attractions and splitting seizes. Love,
Contained in a box, is stable and safe, an answer no one here can offer.

*

Scott Withiam’s third book of poems, Waste Management Facility, was released by MadHat Press in late July 2025. He has also published two additional books of poems: Doors Out of the Underworld (MadHat Press) and Arson & Prophets (Ashland Poetry Press). His chapbook, Desperate Acts & Deliveries, won the Two Rivers Review Prize. His most recent poems and prose pieces can be found in Another Chicago Magazine, Barrow St., Diagram, On the Seawall, Rattle, and Tampa Review. Poems are forthcoming in Plume.

Two Poems by Jill Michelle

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Rite

n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom
with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
         —Ambrose Bierce

Two twenty-somethings
two years as honeys

under a gray-blue blanket
of Florida December sky

we stand—courthouse statue
looming over our too-thin

shoulders in this one photograph
of our wedding, snapped

by the justice of the peace in
St. Augustine, where we didn’t

need witnesses, so there was
no risk of offending any left

out relatives or friends.
You never asked if I was

one of those kids who’d
spun gauzy fantasies

cocooned teen dreams
of bank-breaking weddings.

I would have said, The vows
are all that matters. Maybe then

you would have kept them.

* 

I Spell out Divorce in Pixie-stick Sugar across Our Kitchen Floor
         after Jenny Holzer

You’ll be able to read it by
your own gaslight, so it won’t
matter that the power’s out
at the old country house to
which you’ve been booted
after unburdening yourself
across the dinner table tonight,
corduroyed mule, confessing
adultery before fixing a next
bite of the six o’clock supper
missed from the plate saved,
microwaved after kissing you
hello with half of my hair styled
by our four-year-old before I
tucked her into cartoon-covered
sheets alone, plastic menagerie
of Starburst-colored animal
barrettes forgotten until you’ve
left when brushing my teeth, I
startle at the mirror, can’t help
but laugh.

*

Jill Michelle is the author of Underwater (Riot in Your Throat, 2025) and Shuffle Play (Bottlecap, 2024) and winner of the 2023 NORward Prize for Poetry from New Ohio Review. Her newest work is forthcoming in RHINO Poetry, Salamander Magazine and Scavengers Literary Magazine. She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more at byjillmichelle.com.

After All These Years by Gloria Heffernan

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After All These Years

In another room,
at the other end of the house,
my husband talks on the phone
for an hour with his ex-wife
discussing the joys and sorrows,
wonders and worries of their children,
the oldest of whom is fifty-four.

A frequent enough occurrence,
I have grown so accustomed
to their conversations
that I sometimes forget to marvel
at the way they navigate
the geography of family.

Even now, thirty years after they ceased
being husband and wife,
they have never stopped being curators
of what they co-created,
parents, separate but together,
like the coiled strands of DNA
that course through
the generations.

“Your divorce is better
than most marriages,” I tease,
when the three of us find ourselves
together at the holiday dinner table.
They laugh good-naturedly at the quip,
but it’s really not a joke.

It’s a testament to harmony,
to the way voices blend different notes
to create a more complex music.
I listen and am quietly awestruck as I think,
This is what peace sounds like.

*

Gloria Heffernan’s forthcoming book Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in Spring, 2025. Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List (New York Quarterly Books). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.

Winter Before a Thirty-Year Marriage Ends by Maria Surricchio

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Winter Before a Thirty-Year Marriage Ends

       with a line by Seamus Heaney

Snow beyond the window
fills every corner—empty
of sound—piles in restless
drifts like the train
that just passed through
the town and didn’t stop,
the wisps the planes leave
across the sky. Into the room
where she sits—orphaned
in a little patch of light—
he steps, his lips against
her cheek are warm
and dry. She has forgotten
he can be warm.

*

Maria Surricchio is originally from the UK and now lives near Boulder, Colorado. A life-long lover of poetry, she began writing in 2020 after a long marketing career. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in Blackbird, Salamander, Chicago Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, On the Seawall, The Comstock Review and elsewhere. She has a BA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University and holds an MFA from Pacific University.

Divorce Rat by WIFE X

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Divorce Rat

When my husband and I thought we would stay together,
we decided to landscape the front, tear out the weeds,
pull out a row of shrubs and one big tree.
The shrubs had been planted back in the 80s when the house was built.
Upon quick glance, you might think they were fine—the tops green,
like a toupee. But all of them were half or three-quarters dead.
Brittle by their pudgy middles, desiccated and brown from their waists
down into the ground. We chain-sawed each one at the base,
not realizing the sweaty months, the hatchet hacking,
what sweat and pleading and burns on the palms
to pull out the roots. Into drilled holes, we poured soap
and salt, soaking the roots. Then burning, hand-sawing off
some of the larger roots like taking off an octopus’s legs
one by one, until my husband could use a large pole as a lever,
and you heard the tear. To tear a tree from the Earth
sounds like you’re ripping God’s thick fabric.
When we pulled out the last one, the biggest,
not a shrub but an actual pine tree, taller than either of us
and dead to the height of our heads. Amid its dead roots,
we saw a tunnel in the soil, and a big fat rat body
rolled out and lay on its back on the gravel driveway in the sun.
Once during a fight, I told my husband my affair was his fault.
Not in those words exactly, but it’s true, I blamed him.
I realize now how much this was like the times he had told me
his being suicidal was all my fault. Excuses, how much
I loved the baby compared to him. Once the weeds and tree
were gone, we could see the dry dirt, full of the kind of grubs
that indicate the soil is gone, containing little to no nutrients.
My husband later claimed my affair was to punish him.
I can see the way in which I was, indeed, indecent, an eye for an eye—
not with the affair exactly, because I thought I loved that other man—
but with the blame. The rat lay there. Then, amazingly, sprung up.
Ran into the woods. Terrifying to see a country rat, larger than
a chihuahua, spring into action. Terrifying and thrilling.
A rat is a creature that can survive a dry, dead burrow
filled with chemicals and illness. To think, its belly warmed
from the sun. To pretend to vanquish your foes: a shovel, a chainsaw.
To pretend to reanimate, your own Firebird
from the ash, your own springtime, to begin again.
I am a rat, I might tell my next lover. A rat is a creature
that can play dead for eons until it nearly forgets it is alive.
A rat is a creature who knows how to get by.

*

“All is fair in love and war,” the saying goes. WIFE X disagrees. Pat Benatar sang, “Love is a battlefield.” And with the statistics about intimate partner violence, household labor, and more–WIFE X agrees with Benatar, which is why she is using this nom de guerre as she writes from her home somewhere on the East Coast.

Two Poems by Gerry LaFemina

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It Was the Start of Spring and Anything Felt Possible

You can sit there
on the bust stop bench like at your desk
in sixth grade, squirming
with not wanting
to work or else longing for attention.

Dusk the only bus coming down the avenue.

Ear buds broadcast the same five albums
you’ve listened to this month,
more songs about heartache,
more songs about absence,

so many such songs by now, it’s a wonder

anything more can be said on the subjects.
Lights appear in high rise windows,
bright yellow faces
like daffodils, how hopeful, how happy
those fragile visages

particularly in early April
particularly in a city like yours—
so much cement & steel, & still

those flowers for a few short weeks.

*

After the Divorce

That day a boy climbed
the monkey bars higher, he believed,

than anyone had before
because he’d heard the story about

the tower of Babel & had wanted
to be struck down, too, by god

not for hubris but for solace,
but even the divine didn’t seem to be

watching, so he stayed put
until night pulled on

its dark sweater with silver buttons
& the crickets began chatting in

their alien dialect, & the boy
became too frightened or too tired

to climb down even though
his mother’s call echoed

& echoed, worry italicizing
his name in her mouth, so

he let go, finally, to hunger
& the chill that crept from the metal

into his fingers; how he fell through
the steel lattice—despite

the foam layer above it,
the ground remained firm, unforgiving,

ungiving, & thus the warm air
in his lungs was pushed out

in a long exhalation
of vapor, & it wasn’t ‘til later that

we found, like flotsam after a storm,
his crumpled body, not quite

lifeless, but fractured
so that when he tried to answer

our inquiries while we waited
for the EMTs (we could already

hear the angel wail of an ambulance)
we couldn’t understand a word

he uttered, couldn’t even decipher
the shapes made by his pale lips.

*

Gerry LaFemina’s next collection of poems, AFTER THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, will be released later this year from Stephen F. Austin University Press. His other books include THE PURSUIT: A MEDITATION ON HAPPINESS (CNF) and BABY STEPS IN DOOMSDAY PREPPING (prose poems). LaFemina teaches at Frostburg State University and in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow Univerisity, and fronts the four piece punk band, The Downstrokes.