13 Divorce poems

Such conundrums of English. I blame my ex-wife. She rearranged my dictionary, or re- taught an old story: in this book, if you look for alimony, it follows acrimony (nothing between). However, contrition still borders contrivance (if it can be seen). Untruth in her troth sallowed the language, sullied a certain conjugation: how she lied as she lay with me. Apparently her monogamy was too close to monotony. Alas, after parting with that particular lass, I remain a student examining all our words’ gradation: how anniversary now precedes annihilation.

Your paperwork in, it’s like the morning after a party, the shaken survey of damage, a waste of bottles where there was laughter. It all seems so much more than you can manage: the accusing cups and stubbed-out cigarettes, the sun assaulting the window, your throbbing head. It’s not enough to face your own regrets (though they’re coming back fast, the things you said) because someone’s trailed bean dip across the table, someone’s ground salsa in the rug with his shoe. So you start to clean, as much as you are able, and think how far those hours have fled from you, before the hangover and your sour tongue, when you felt lovely, and infinite, and young.

The papers were twelve pages we signed them in twenty minutes the marriage was fourteen years the math is what it is