Rebecca Schumejda

Sentenced

 

It’s more about the regrets than the years,

all that could have been done to change

the trajectory of this unfathomable tragedy.

I count the I could haves like you count

the days, hours, minutes, seconds, insects

crawling, flying, alive or dead in your cell.

 

You keep lists on state-issued paper, these

lists give you a modicum of control. Turn

them into poems, into airplanes, into flowers,

origami animals, turn all of the suffering

into something beautiful. We all need to

turn this into something like the bird who

 

makes puno from the apple cores and

orange peels, a trade from the monthly

allowance mom brings you, thirty-five pounds

of guilt: fresh vegetables, fruits, beef jerky,

chocolate bars and candies. She doesn’t

consider what men will trade for these

 

small gifts. We all have to protect ourselves

from others, from ourselves. It’s less about

the years and more about learning to forgive

ourselves for what we did or didn’t do.

I avoid visiting, can’t be face-to-face with

my self-imposed sentence staring back

 

at me from behind an uncrossable line.

My sentence is all day and a night,

a starless, sleepless, somber night where

morning walks in like a sadistic guard,

raking his flashlight along the bars

Wake up sweetie, time to start another day.

 

 


 

327 Days After Sentencing

 

The snow, falling all day, makes me

think about you in your cell,

in your head, a clam in a shell,

high or low tide, murky water

that hides sharp rocks

 

Where do I even begin shoveling?

 

I dream of us clamming in

the Shinnecock Bay beside the

Ponquogue Bridge using 

bare feet to find shells like we did

when we were kids, like we did

with our kids. Now snow falls

 

heavy like the relentless fear

that I won’t be able to protect

my own children from monsters

disguised as people

they were taught to trust. 

 

Forgive me

for telling a new acquaintance

that I am an only child,

for wanting to forget you’re alive

while simultaneously wanting

to pretend this shovel is a clam rake

that the snow is the bay. Forgive me

for making icicles hanging outside

my window into steel bars,

 

for not being a better person

 

for letting all the snowfall

before starting to clear it,

for snapping the handle of my shovel

like how a lifetime ago

I watched you shuck a clam

and snap that blade right off.

 

 

 


 

Talking About Mental Illness with my Eight-Year-Old on a Snowy April Afternoon

 

I watch a cardinal use its orange beak to dig through snow for seeds.

 

A knight for a fish, my daughter asks, is a knight worth more than a fish?

 

She means bishop but says fish.

 

The snow was supposed to stop falling by noon, but it's a quarter of three.

 

When she asks me how people know if they’re hearing voices that others

don’t hear, I tell her two rooks are more powerful than a queen.

 

I mean I don’t know, but point to the rook she is about to lose.

 

There must be at least six inches of accumulation.

 

On television, she heard siblings of schizophrenics are at higher risk for psychosis.

 

I ask her why she doesn’t watch cartoons anymore and in one move she puts me in check.

 

 

 


Peel

 

As I remove the skin from a clementine, you tell me

you may drop the Civics class you’re enrolled in

through the prison degree program because

it gets so loud on your block that you can’t think,

 

the indescribable sound of pent-up guilt is cacophonic.

 

I don’t tell you my husband brings our daughters

outside whenever you call. There are only a few

dirty mounds of snow left. I watch my girls run

straight to them with their good sneakers on;

 

I don’t tell you this either, instead I suggest earplugs,

 

meditation, humming to drown out the background

noises. You laugh and ask me to send you pictures

of everyone and I say I will, but you know I won’t.

I am pulling apart what you say section by section,

 

your words seep into invisible cuts on my heart

 

and sting. I imagine the inmates in your class

discussing citizenship, the rights and duties they

forfeited. Outside, my daughters bury themselves

in dirty snow as if it’s beach sand. You tell me how

 

no one else comes to see you besides a preacher

 

who reads to you from the bible then quizzes you

on the material covered. You tell him your meds

make you forget, even though the truth is you

aren’t listening. Really you are trying to tell me

 

there has to be someone listening to your prayers,

 

that you need me. I place the clementine down

on the counter. I look outside again and watch my

daughters sculpting tiny snowmen with their bare

hands.  Hey, you say, look out the window at the sun,

 

tell me you don’t believe there’s a God behind that.  

 

 

 

 


Sweet Fruit

 

Peeling a Mango with a paring knife

on a snowy April morning, allowing the

blade to meet my thumb, I think about

my brother; I always think about

my brother, especially when handling hope.

Somewhere sweet fruit grows year-round,

but not in the cell he is confined to.

Overripe mangoes smell and taste like fish

to me. The shape of the island we grew

up on, the shape of the shame for a horrendous

act I didn’t commit, the shape of the guilt

I shouldn’t feel. My daughters, at the

kitchen counter holding the slices up to

their hungry mouths like bait,

don’t know how my brother haunts me

like that weakfish I pulled from the

Long Island Sound, three hooks

dangling from its mouth, how against

my father’s wishes, I cut the line, yes,

I cut the line

and I set it free.


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The views and opinions expressed throughout belong to the individual artists and may or may not coincide with those of the other artists (or editors) represented within the magazine. Hobo Camp Review supports a free-for-all atmosphere of artistic expression, so enjoy the poetry, fiction, opinions, and artwork within, read with an open mind, and comment wisely. Thanks for stopping by the Camp!