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.
Here is the original formatting for this one poem of the three that couldn't be presented as intended:
Roads closed
Initiating Wednesday's walk,
forecasted clear skies invitingly promise
an encouraging outing
past the open door
into childhood,
a muddy playground of grimy, tarnished trinkets,
hand-me-down souvenirs,
and overexposed negatives,
then the path
leading
to the
classroom
and its subjects:
Karen,
Gordon,
Bruce,
Janet,
Jane,
and that guy that got into trouble now and then.
Oh, yeah, that was me.
There are uncountable, unaccountable potholes
taunting my feet,
one of which, always, unexpectedly,
gets caught in their hidden recesses:
forward momentum
turned into
brutal falls.
There are alley ways:
narrow, some unpaved,
that once entered,
and
encountering
an
un-
navigable
dead end
, are
a
bear
to
back
out
—
simply
un-ne-go-ti-a-ble
I visited the city of our first year
—together—
as I often do...
but now
vanished
is much of
the interior
of that corner café
where we first met:
its outside signage
rusted and illegible.
Gone are one, two places where we together
—arms locked—
stretched
our budget
to buy groceries.
Only that first store remains
the other
now
missing
now
vague mysteries
the apartment is still there
but not the stairs
were there elevators
in our wing?
ever?
There had to be
but they are just
walls now...
Moving on to our
second city
I find much less:
gone are most roads
not sure who the
president was
of the HOA,
the White House.
Don't ask me of the cities in-between
I am lucky to know this one
but yet —
who called to see us yesterday?
I can remember my first kiss at six
but not who last rang the doorbell.
Echoes
scurry about
sniffing the decay,
detritus,
and their own
droppings,
quickly
down
gutter
holes
and cellar openings:
now but an uninvited, unwanted
tourist in the ruins
clutching the few remaining pages
of a guidebook
with print
too small.
The clouds have gathered.
Flashes and flashbacks peek out,
fearful of the shadows their own light casts.
They can't craft an outline,
a paragraph, a complete sentence.
I don't know what I don't know,
I never have —
but I do remember what I don't
remember
and no amount of
careful
remodeling
will ever set that right.
— zumwalt (2025)
zumpoems 