Bücher von Rebecca Schumejda

Sentenced: It's not that we didn't know what the sentence would be, it's that we didn't know what would happen on the other side of the sentence. We didn't understand that it would be a long story, paragraphs filled with contrasting sentences: mine, my husband's, my mother's, her mother's, her father's, their sons, her sister's, her brother's, friends and family. What we didn't know is that, for us, this day would not bring closure; instead, this day propelled us into new directions.

This full-color poetry book by Rebecca Schumejda features a single long-form poem about the incarceration of her brother and its rippling effects across their family. Includes artworks by Hosho McCreesh."How do you forgive the unforgivable? This is the question Rebecca Schumejda wrestles with, on a grand scale, in this emotionally taut, tightly structured, intensely personal poem. Using a slow reveal, the poet dispenses morsels of information, with regard to the nature of the crime, and her struggles with coping with her love for her brother who committed it and, finally, the heinous nature of what he did, until we learn, as well, what happened. She asks, among the many effective refrains, "What if you had died that night?" Somehow life could have been easier if he had. Maybe. I know how she feels. I've been there: different relative, similar crime. Something Like Forgiveness is not simply a must read, it is an experience." -Alan Catlin, poet, editor Misfit Magazinebios: Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length ollections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press) and most recently Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books). She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family. You can find her online at: rebecca-schumejda.comHosho McCreesh is currently writing, painting, and making stuff in the gypsum & caliche badlands of the American Southwest. His work has appeared widely in print, audio, & online. He can be found at www.hoshomccreesh.com

Rebecca Schumejda's second full-length collection, CADILLAC MEN, explores the pool hall subculture before the economic downturn in 2008, when the narrator and her husband took a calculated risk and purchased a pool hall in downtown Kingston, New York. During their arduous planning, they did not consider that their business and livelihood would depend on men who threw pebbles in church collection plates, shot up in the bathroom, and had nicknames like Bobby-Balls-in-Hand, The Butcher, and Mikey Meatballs. CADILLAC MEN is a fractured poetic memoir about the year the narrator's husband chased his lifelong dream by starting Crazy Eights, and the recessions that occurred as her family, the economy, her health and The Cadillac Men all took downward spirals.