Interstate Nocturne
Proud to announce that Commuter Lit has published Zumwalt’s recent poem, Interstate Nocturne:
Please visit: https://commuterlit.com/2026/02/tuesday-interstate-nocturne/!
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Zumwalt Poem at Ink Sweat and Tears: Candidate for Pick of the Month
I am honored to announce that Zumwalt’s recent poem, “take this,” has been selected by the editors of Ink Sweat and Tears as one of their six nominees for pick of the month.
You can read all six selections here:
https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/january-2026-pick-of-the-month/
After reading, if you wish to vote just click on the Vote Here URL that is shown before the text of the six entries.
Gibbon and Toynbee bump into Spengler at Starbucks
Gibbon and Toynbee bump into Spengler at Starbucks
Steel glass shafts
Glint skyward
Glittering silver deceptively erect
Yet reality is whispered
With salient impotence
In sequins, basking
They are ripe for a gaudy technicolor cave-in
To a Muzak score
Rotten props, rotten struts, rotten foundations
Polished pillars once
We’ve lost the varnish
And revel in the grease-spots
And ember-burns
While concealing our leprous nudity
in faded Purple
Thus we pursue Byzantium
At a break-neck stagger into the nitre trough
To be the feast of Seljuk flies
Humming 4-chord progressions
Rotten rags, rotten flesh, rotten sensibilities
No phoenix pyre
The red of flame metamorphosed to rust
And blue-bright iron
Decays to dust
Rubble spawning weeds
And housing ravenous mandible-clapping insects
Living but to shun the day
And suck the husk
Of desiccated brains
—Zumwalt (around 1978?)
Slippery ice
He eyed up the ice for the steal,
Which he claimed he would do with much zeal,
But now he’s retreating
From his warlike chest beating—
He calls this the art of the deal.
— zumwalt (1/22/2026, revised 1/28/2026)
Relativity
“China wedding goes viral as twin brothers marry twin sisters and both sides have twin uncles.”
Relativity
Two sisters, identical twins,
Wed brothers with big matching grins.
The household now shares
Their uncles in pairs,
But that’s not where chaos begins.
— zumwalt (1/22/2026)
The Art of Repeal
“President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, scrapped the tariffs that he threatened to impose on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland, pulling a dramatic reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island ‘including right, title and ownership.’”
News Story: https://apnews.com/article/trump-davos-housing-greenland-gaza-a2f3f4c18ba321c8025a3e208fc0ddf6
The Art of Repeal
He eyed up the ice for a deal,
Which he swore he could buy or would steal,
But now he’s retreating
From his warlike chest beating,
as if it had all been surreal.
— zumwalt (1/22/2026)
Three poems published today at The Good Men Project
Three Zumwalt poems were published as featured content today at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/faceoff-on-facebook/
This is quite an honor to have three lengthy poems of this level of density and abstraction published on a high-traffic site like The Good Men Project. Please visit if you have a minute.
This is a highly visited online publication per Gemini AI: “The Good Men Project: ~2 – 3 Million monthly visitors (varies by source, sometimes listed as 1.9M unique visitors)“
FYI -- the formatting for "roads closed" was lost when posted on their site. UPDATE: Roads closed was removed from their website, requested by me, due to formatting issues. I will post an update when Roads closed is published again.
White Russians with White Vodka
White Russians with White Vodka
The sky peers out over
its trailing cape, wide and pallid,
obscuring the meridian,
erasing the horizontal arguments
of Kamchatka avenues.
Don’t check your map:
it will look much the same as in summer;
it won’t show flurries,
blizzards, cyclones,
meter upon meter
of accumulated snowbanks—
You will not see the swallowed
Lada Grantas, Kia Rios,
Toyota Prados, Cherry Tiggos.
Once one could have turned on a TV
late at night
and seen snow—
now politicians,
talking heads,
social media
whitewash and whitenoise us
non-stop:
ultimately,
we will be head deep,
unable to plow out,
and even Kamchatka
will seem like
a tropical paradise.
–zumwalt (January 2026)
Based on today’s news https://asianmail.in/2026/01/19/record-breaking-snowfall-in-russia-extreme-snow-buries-towns-in-kamchatka/ and this dVerse post’s call to action: https://dversepoets.com/2026/01/20/poetics-new-year-snow/
A sure bet
A sure bet
The pick and roll is part of play,
And catch what coach has got to say.
But there’s a more important task:
Collecting bags of major cash.
You miss the shot, you miss the rim,
While placing bets outside the gym.
We take the bribe to slip and fall,
No cap, it’s part of basketball.
We fill the jerseys up with green,
The wildest flex you’ve ever seen.
We pray the Feds don’t watch the game,
Or we’ll get cooked and take the blame.
It’s great to hang with looks that slay,
To drive the whips and soak the rays.
To hit the clubs and play the field,
To party hard and never yield.
But danger lurks in losing games,
Not from the fans or public shame:
Don’t leave behind some mid-wit tell,
That turns your set-up into some
cringey,
grungy,
hoopless cell.
— zumwalt (January 2026)
New Story:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/15/sport/basketball-charges-gambling-scheme
Speaking Facetiously
Speaking Facetiously
Look at all the things I’m doing,
Stopping trouble while it’s brewing.
Midterms bring my party danger,
Turning winners into traitors.
I have made the country stronger:
Let me stay a little longer.
Keep elections out of reach,
For if we lose, who gets impeached?
— zumwalt (Jan. 2026)
