Waiting at the Dead End Diner: Poems (Working Lives)

A Book of Poems that Reads Like a Novel...With a spot-on ear for dialogue and a solid feel for gestural nuance, Rebecca Schumejda sweeps us swiftly into the late-night chatter and dish clanking of the Dead End Diner. In this collection, we meet a memorable cast of prickly though resilient characters who simultaneously shrink and expand under the high-pressure cooker of life. Cinematic in its conception, I can’t help but think of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, or some of Raymond Carver’s best for that matter. Waiting at the Dead End Diner is a deft exploration of the complicated forces embodied in gender, unreciprocated love, ethnic and religious stereotype, and economic class, where participants dream big and live hard in the face of unflinching obstacles. If I could purchase one meal at any hour, it would undoubtedly be Rebecca Schumejda’s latest.―Manuel Paul López, author of The Yearning Feed