Best Interest
(For Lance Henson)

This is a poem for all the judges who consistently award sole custody to the mothers.

This is a poem for all those studies that say children of divorce grow up best if raised in

joint custody.

This is a poem for all the judges who read those studies and award sole custody to

women anyway.

This is a poem for all those mothers who tell their children what worthless bums their

fathers are.

This is a poem for all those mothers who shop out of Spiegel catalogues with their

monthly child support and welfare checks while their children live on hand-me-

downs and Top Ramen.

This is a poem for the little girl locked in a closet almost to the point of blind albino

salamanderhood, almost to point of forgetting the warmth of sunlight or the sweet

sound of her own name.

This is a poem for blind albino salamanders who at least got to choose for themselves.

This is a poem for the little girl in Ireland who was raised in a chicken coop. When the

authorities rescued her, she was already twelve years old and all she could say

was “Bok, bok, bok.”

This is a poem for the chickens in Ireland who could understand her.

This is a poem for the woman in Jacksonville who had yet another anxiety attack and

drove her minivan the wrong way down the freeway, despite the twelve signs, like

apostles, warning her to turn back, turn back.

This is a poem for the woman who tried to kill herself and her babies by driving her

minivan into a lake. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she unbuckled her

safety belt and swam ashore, leaving her screaming children snug in their little car

seats to sink into the cool, comforting concentric ripples.

This is a poem for the woman in Atlanta who duct taped a garden hose to her SUV’s

exhaust and piped the sacred smoke into her sleeping children’s bedroom. A

modern-day Medeia, she claimed her divorce had left her frustrated and

embittered and that she couldn’t bear the sight of her own children, who looked

too much like their father.

This is a poem for the woman who left her children to bake in the back of her SUV under

A blistering Iowa summer sun while she was having her hair done. When questioned by police, she said she had a lot on her mind.

This is a poem for the makers of those minivans and SUVs.

This is a poem for the woman in Ohio who shaved her little girl’s head, kept her doped

up on sleeping pills, and told everyone the child had leukemia while collecting

thousands of dollars in donations for medical treatment. In court, she is

pleading “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

This is a poem for the woman in Houston who drowned her six children and blamed it

on postpartum depression. Only she can tell us how it feels to hold a toddler, desperate for years yet unlived, underwater in a bathtub until its tiny body goes limp.

This is a poem for all those idiots who phoned in death threats to the father who was

away at work. “Now what kind of man leaves a woman imprisoned at home

alone with six babies?” they demanded to know.

This is a poem for my grandmother, who if still alive, would be slapping all those

idiots upside the head.

This is a poem for each of her ten little Indian children, and her husband who worked in

a rich man’s vineyard from sunup to sundown to keep everyone alive.

This is a poem for fisherman who consistently haul up dead infants in their nets. I don’t

think this is what Jesus meant when He said, “Follow me and I will make you

Fishers of Men.”

This is a poem for the hundreds and hundreds of newborns found in dumpsters every day.

This is a poem for all the judges who award custody in these cases and feel no guilt.

This is a poem for all the judges who award custody in these cases and feel no guilt.

This is a poem for all the judges who award custody in these cases and feel nothing at all.

This is a poem for all those sons and daughters who survive.

This is a poem for all those sons and daughters who survive and, upon reaching their 18^th

birthdays, immediately buy second-hand Jeeps and go look for their fathers.

This is a poem for all those fathers who are found by their long-lost children, who stand

in the middle of the street hugging them, unable to let go, unable to let go.