zumpoems

The Sassoon Collection: ii. A pickle and a black hole

Here is the second of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of 10 poems in his Sassoon Collection.

ii. A pickle and a black hole

Mass and form had the pickle, sweet, sour, tall and straight;
The round black hole collapsing still further than it knew
Made its longest shadow with gravity
A ghostly bridge ’twixt the pickle and space.
But stars, with their continuous day, must pass;
And blustering winds will stretch all gherkins
for which I’ve no measurements to express
the moment of conjunction,
a singularity with no exit
for stars and pickled cucumbers alike.

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the second piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. “A pickle and a black hole” is loosely based on Sassoon’s A Poplar and the Moon.”

The Sassoon Collection: i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep

Zumwalt has provided revisions to his set of 10 poems in the Sassoon Collection. Here is the first:

i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep

voices wailing around the house
thud of feet and slam of doors
everyone yowling
only the clocks wind down

around this small room
no sense of the hour
crowded with lemonade breath
high-pitched voices like hounds in pain
as clouds hover over my eyes

fighting sleep with the fork from my dessert plate
not yet ready to go where the dreams are built
where you take reality with you so as not to be alone
dragging it by its rough cotton shirt collar

the blurry faces become blurry voices
despite discordance from straying notes
the lights descend and siphon colors
whirling into a vortex that spins off dimensions
like a playlist streaming fragments from the past

drifting towards sleep
the hounds now whining like imprisoned puppies
the darkness becoming home
without furnishings
everything fading into peace
except for one small lingering concern
for everything unfinished

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the first piece of Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised by the author. This poem opens the set by providing a misleading head fake to Sassoon’s Everyone Sang, when in reality the poem is primarily based on Sassoon’s Falling Asleep.  Where in the original, Sassoon sustains a hushed, introspective mood using domestic quiet and natural sounds to mirror the speaker’s mental transition from wakefulness to sleep, Zumwalt leans into domestic turmoil and modern-day stress, even throwing in an Emily Dickensen reference for good measure.