Four Poems by Tom Zimmerman

1.5

a bag of casarecce on the kitchen
counter    strong ale sweating close at hand
my wife on Zoom with friends   the dog zonked pancake
flat & angels looming in my head
//    i love my silence & my reading    it’s
John Ashbery right now with ghosts of Mahler
2 afloat like smoke within the dim
urns of my ears  //  the movie i rewatched
this afternoon less weird than my memory
of it    much of so called life’s like this
we’ve got it backwards    with the real events
our ash    the recollection the consuming
fire    our inattention smashes Now
into the bland quotidian    we could
be living twice instead it’s1.5

approaching dotage

death doesn’t bother me but aging’s got
me by the balls    the meadow grass lies matted
like our winter hair    the dog & i
walk gimpy but i swear he’s getting longer
as he ages    me i’m shrinking    shirking
says my droll & pious angel    //    poet
that i’m reading wears his politics
in Day-Glo on his sleeve tattoo    don’t blame
him    me these days i cover up my flesh
for public decency    resist however’s
now my favorite verb    //     let’s end this my
two thousandth poem give or take     oh Em
i’m thinking of a certain slant of light
of how the moth outlives the butterfly

contra zero

the flame tips glowing slowly gold    i’m not
backsliding into Hell but dozing by
my fireplace    the windows black my own
reflected face a moon king    silver seas
a dark side     wife insists my skin’s absurdly
pink     to every man his specialty
//     i love the fray the struggle life is hard
blahblah for all of us    so many years
i thought i’d lived enough thought let death come
//    then i exhumed my angels     felt a cosmos
flood my skull the mind’s migration path
a Möbius strip my ghosts simpáticos
//    a crown without a head’s a zero     Nero
with his tuneless lute & soulless smoke

maudlin goblin

selves wrestle memories in your brain     go make
the bed & do the dishes scrub the dried wine
nipples clean from bottoms of the stemware
globes     //     life pages flipping backwards muse-
besotted self once wrote “oh maudlin goblin
days stunt shorter darker     much like me
(& why do i keep typing muck)     autumnal
both of us     worlds whirling green to ash”
//    ambivalence embarks     first grabs you by
the scruff    muse grunts fear smells of burning fur
//    tall grass black branches shrink the path you walk
with doggo    crossroads crone there suckles two
tween demons lifts her skirts    your hidden birthmark
tingles you have never left the woods




Thomas Zimmerman (he/him/his) teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Circle of Salt, Rawhead, and Wailing and Gnashing. His latest poetry book is Free Range Angels (Cyberwit, 2025).