Divorce Papers: A Slow Burn deftly traverses the wide terrain of a couple’s final years of marriage—from the first moment the wife places the match under matrimony to her ultimate flight as the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. An incendiary cross examination of the tiny embers that smolder and scorch through the narrator’s body “writhing in [her] bones like barbed wire,” Divorce Papers takes an unflinching look at the delicate dance of separation and all of its fractures, fissures and ruptures in intimate detail. Throughout this journey we experience a deep, intense love and compassion for the narrator’s children, as well as the transmutation of marital strife into personal liberation. These poems ignite the imagination and heart with breathtaking intensity and leave us in awe to watch the narrator soar above the wreckage and ash.

Leslieann Hobayan is a poet, essayist, healing artist, and host of Spiritual Grit, a podcast living at the intersection of spirituality and activism. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a 2018 Best of the Net, her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Aster(ix) Journal, The Lantern Review, The Mom Egg Review, The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit, and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey with her three daughters.