LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE NINETEENTH

Detective Stories | Arthur Winfield Knight

Short story
16 pages
4” x 5 ½” short story chapbook
Free Books
1787 Rhoda
Lowell MI 49331 USA
Free

The title makes this little book seem like it's going to have several stories in it, but it's just one short story, called “Detective Stories,” about a writer hired to find a man's past three wives in the pursuing of an annulment. The writer basically comes to the conclusion that the women, two of whom he finds, just don't want to be found and that he is “liv[ing] in the shadow of other people's sorrow,” for which he has no taste to continue in its lonely grasp.

The writing is a bit disjointed and jumps around a lot; I wasn't quite sure what was happening for half of the story, but overall, it's just an enjoyable little story about having to do the things in life that make you happy and breaking away from the things that don't. A sample:

[ ... ] “I only asked him for three things when we split: a skirt a recently deceased aunt made, a jewelry box my dad gave me, and a book about tips for the kitchen. I had them all before we were married, so they weren't even community property.” Her voice rose, echoing in the bar, which was cellar-like. “He wouldn't return anything, even though I'd tried to be as kind to him as possible. I called his sister, who lived near us, and told her, ‘Be nice to Mark; his marriage just broke,’ after I sent him on his way.”

[ ... ]

There are a couple of misspellings in here, but I think this press just prints all free books as a self-described “non-profit organization dedicated to the free distribution of literature.” Can't complain about that!

•This book was sent to me from the author because I have corresponded with him.•
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LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE SEVENTH

Falling Forward | Rebecca Schumejda

Poetry
80 pages
ISBN 978-1-934513-12-5
5” x 8” trade paperback
Published by Sunnyoutside
Available from Sunnyoutside and Amazon

Falling Forward is an absolute gem of a salute to the married woman, housewife, mother, regular everyday female trooper through this so-called life. The poems are down-to-earth, accessible, understandable, and downright endearingly charming.

The cover, showing a tree with an immense root system, should give a few clues that the story is going to run deep, about close issues, family ties, struggles of life and love, familial roots, the deep-seated maternal connections of both roots and branches.

It begins with a beautiful quote from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables that sets the tone remarkably for the rest of the book:

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are
moments when, whatever be the attitude
of the body, the soul is on its knees.

And there it is, all packaged into a few sentences — family, motherhood, religion, soul-searching, questioning — the ongoing themes of Schumejda's writing.

The book is divided into four parts, the last part being one poem where the first three lines are the titles of the other three sections, each of those sections separated with dedications and themes to various people and time periods in Rebecca's life. Each section is comprised of little vignettes, scenarios, and moments that have made an impact in, and are metaphors for, her life and traveled paths. The entire book is full of these very human moments and emotions, of real and relatable situations.

From the first poem about relaying the news of a cat that has died after eighteen years as a loyal companion to someone not yet home from work, pondering the breakdown, the reactions, the quiet words:

[ ... ]
I wait on the porch
to avoid the silence
that creeps
around the house
on ghost paws.
[ ... ]

to using kitchen utensils to relate communication to significant others across a breakfast table:

[ ... ]
You stir your coffee
with the handle of a butter knife:
this is how you tell me
that you're not listening.
[ ... ]

to providing insight into a comfortable, yet antsy, marriage with all its questions and compromises:

[ ... ]
Maybe it's marriage,
not the heat wave,
that makes us lazy.
In protest to “cereal again,”
you kneel beside me,
pour milk into
my bellybutton.
While dredging with
my thumbnail,
I can't help thinking
about all the cows
swatting flies with their tails,
waiting to be hooked up
to a machine
that will empty the milk
from their swollen utters.

and all the differences in emotion, follow-through, and reactions of men and women:

[ ... ] you wrap gifts and
stack them into piles without regard for crushed
bows. [ ... ]

Schumejda has it nailed, the human side, the ah-yes moments, the words that say what every woman has thought a thousand times and is thinking right this moment.

Rebecca integrates her background and diverse upbringing — atheist parents, devout Catholic grandparents, a father who died when she was quite young — to discuss faith, spirituality, the parallels of religion and life, openly:

[ ... ]
My mother handles conversation like
good china and religion — takes it out
on holidays, but prefers to dine on paper
plates and drink red wine from plastic cups.
[ ... ]

and to invite many interpretations of the repeating line “the truth is too heavy,” ringing loudly with both religious and everyday life connotations, charging into other parallels of people and nature, of birds going after earthworms the way the author goes after her partner's toast crust, both leaving little left over until the spring can come again.

Beautiful. Brilliant.

•This book was purchased from the publisher because I had previously corresponded with the author.•
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