Rebecca Schumejda Tear Duct

Foreword editor at large, Eugene Schwartz worte: "This short book of striking poetry by a Kingston, NY area poet, uses words as they were intended to be used, combined in such a way as to create pictures of life and work and relationship that we can recognize—and yet so original and direct that you will turn the pages eagerly curious about the next."

Doug Holder: "Many of the poems in this fine collection deal with the poet’s concessions to domesticity—the promise of youth versus the realities of being an adult. In the poem 'The Happy Ever After' Schumejda skillfully defines the dichotomy between the different phases in her life: the endless horizons of youth versus domestic routine.... There are many well-crafted poems about marriage, the poet’s father, and her relentless quest for meaning in the pedestrian."

Melody Sherosky, Blind Man's Rainbow, WInter 2007 issue ""Falling into Hot Tar" arrived--finally--with some tribute to Schumejda's father" "His skin was caked with shiny black tar; / the flesh that peeked out was a garden of pink, blistery roses. / He bent down to untie his work boots, / but frooze there with his forehead resting on his knee, / his big hands wrapped around his calf, his body weeping for him." The elegance of this poem made the entire collection for me. Although I had expected st least some mention of Schumejda's father somewhere in the collection, I was not prepared for such a well-written and beautifully described tribute."

Sample poem:

Walking Into Fists

When she talks about love,
her body flails like a misguided kite;
the child becomes tangled
when trying to regain control.

The who, what, when, where, why
questions are getting old, her responses
and breasts, sloppy. We caught onto
one another's secrets a long time ago; her spine,

the yellow line that parts her back,
divides two roads that run north amd south,
both riddled with speed bumps where
the swelling hasn't settled in yet.

He is smarter than her; he told her
time and time again, so she won't forget.
She can sever the strings and let the wind
take her, but he'll find her; yes, he will

find her. But when she escapes for a few minutes
she comes over; I drink beer and she sips
tea because he smells her breath
when she returns home. We won't talk

about our shortcomings, we never have.
We slice lemons and put them in our drinks;
we are not bitter; we accept our excuses;
we just refuse to share them, they're ours.

We talk about love, in the figurative
sense; we talk about the jobs we
never dreamt we'd work; she reminds me
about the time I got so drunk in college that I vomited
out of my window onto the dean of students.

Later, after he calls her for the fifth time,
she will leave. I will watch her back her car
out of the driveway and into the road
that she will travel back to him on.

I will finish the rest of the beer before walking
up the block to the bodega. I don't tell her
to leave him and she doesn't tell me to stop drinking.
It's simple: every kite bears its own cross.

Dream Big, Work Harder