Out of Schlitz
I am pleased to announce that one of Zumwalt’s poems, “Out of Schlitz,” has been published in Light, the premier online journal for light verse and the oldest and most widely recognized publication in the United States dedicated entirely to witty and humorous poetry. Please visit here: https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/poems-of-the-week/out-of-schlitz/
Text of poem as featured at Light is below.
Poems of the Week
Out of Schlitz
by Zumwalt
“Schlitz Premium, a beer brand that traces its roots to Milwaukee in the 1840s and was once among the largest breweries in the country, is being put ‘on hiatus,’ parent company Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed Friday after Wisconsin Brewing Company announced it would brew the brand’s final batch later this month.”
—Fox Business News
With measured trends and spreadsheets came
those analysts who killed a name:
A brew that tastes of bowling shoes
Is poured out as financial news.
Pabst ran the math, it weighed the yield,
And marched the yeast right off the field.
As taste gets dated, margins shrink:
So bid farewell to Granddad’s drink.
But wait ten years, they’ll give us more
In high-gloss cans from every store;
They’ll charge a fortune for the thrill
Of drinking this fermented swill.
— Zumwalt (May 2026)
Published on May 25, 2026
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Never one to walk away from controversy or beer, Zumwalt has also sent us a revised version of a free verse poem on this topic that he penned earlier last week:
When You’re Out of Schlitz
They have officially placed the yeast on hiatus,
a term previously reserved for exhausted child stars
and caught-on-mic morning show hosts.
Now, it is gracefully applied to a twelve-ounce can
that tastes predominantly of 1974 and bowling shoe rentals.
The pivot was, naturally, data-driven:
a team of strategists,
hydrating on premium energy drinks
marketed as performance optimizers,
determined the current legacy yield
could no longer justify an aging brew.
So now the fermentation tanks are quietly drained,
the hops offered a highly competitive severance package.
It isn’t a termination, the press release insists,
just a strategic realignment.
Perhaps in a decade, they will exhume Schlitz
in a slim, matte-finish can
and rebrand it as a premium heritage artifact
for postal codes that treat commercial failure
as a high-end aesthetic.
Until then, we must manage the sudden loss
of this reliably unglamorous liquid as
the last can is flattened against the concrete.
–Zumwalt (May 2026)
