Yard Sale 

Friday 10am-3pm


The man who comes while we are still setting up

and asks if we have any firearms or ammunition


how my mother sits in a rocking chair in the shade

waiting for someone to cart away her sorrows


then when she stands, we smirk at the five-dollar

sticker on her rear end, but say nothing. Go home


now, find what you have to sell, dust off your

worries and place it on wabbly folding tables


on your driveway, nothing and everything will make

sense. Make signs and post them strategically around


town. There is someone looking for what you never had,

be kind to those who come, listen when they tell you


how their grandmother had a mixing bowl like yours,

how she made the best macaroons, offer her a tissue,


five dollars off, this is therapy, sell her something else

something she didn’t know she needed, but does.


When she takes the sticker from your mother’s backside,

don’t look away keep a straight face, keep a straight face.



Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections includingFalling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press) and Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books). Her latest book Something Like Forgiveness, which features collages by Hosho McCreesh, is available from Stubborn Mule Press. 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. www.rebecca-schumejda.com