Zombie Logic Press

Zombie Logic Press is the independent publishing imprint of poet and author Thomas L. Vaultonburg. Founded in Rockford, Illinois, ZLP has spent nearly three decades releasing poetry, fiction, children's books, literary experiments, and the occasional beautiful mistake.

The titles collected here span multiple eras of a writing life—from the surrealism of Detached Retinas and the dark lyricism of Flesh Wounds to the children's-book absurdity of The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company and the later reflections gathered in Tea With the Tigress. Some were published in tiny editions, some disappeared for years, and some were nearly forgotten altogether.

This site serves as a permanent home for the Zombie Logic Press catalog. Every book shown here is available directly from the publisher.

Tea With The Tigress : Poems 2010-2020

These poems were written between 2010 and 2020 during a decade spent building a life, helping raise a family, surviving heart surgery, participating in a thriving local art scene.

By turns romantic, absurd, philosophical, and funny, Tea With the Tigress finds Thomas L. Vaultonburg turning his attention away from the wreckage of youth and toward the quieter mysteries of companionship, creativity, and belonging.

Gathered from a period when writing often took a back seat to living, these poems document the final chapter of one life just before its unexpected transformation into another.

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Flesh Wounds

Flesh Wounds gathers poems written between 1997 and 2004 during Thomas L. Vaultonburg's years behind the bar—working in strip clubs, country clubs, dive bars, sports bars, restaurants, and eventually his own tavern beneath a bridge.

Darkly comic, profane, and brutally honest, these poems document a world fueled by alcohol, bad decisions, fleeting romances, and the strange humanity that emerges after midnight. Beneath the humor lies a record of grief, loneliness, desire, and survival.

Part confession, part observation, and part barstool philosophy, Flesh Wounds captures a writer finding meaning in the wreckage while refusing to look away from any of it.

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Submerged Structure

Submerged Structure takes its title from a real warning sign once posted along the Rock River in northern Illinois. Beneath the humor, absurdity, and pop-culture detours lies a similar warning: much of what shapes us remains hidden below the surface.

Written over a single summer, these poems draw on a decade spent working in bars and restaurants, observing the strange rituals of American life. Filled with dark comedy, working-class characters, television ghosts, misfits, romantics, and professional disappointments, Submerged Structure finds equal measures of absurdity and beauty in the everyday world.

By turns profane, funny, melancholy, and self-deprecating, this collection captures a writer attempting to laugh at a world that often gives him every reason not to.

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Detached Retinas

Published in 1997, Detached Retinas captures Thomas L. Vaultonburg at the threshold between youth and adulthood. Written in the years following college and the end of a long relationship, these poems emerge from a period of sudden freedom, uncertainty, and reinvention.

Unlike the observational realism that would characterize later collections, Detached Retinas leans toward the surreal, the dreamlike, and the unexpected. Strange images, shifting realities, and imaginative leaps reflect a writer still discovering both his voice and his place in the world.

Created before the bartender years, before the griefs and hard-earned experiences that shaped later books, Detached Retinas preserves the perspective of a young poet looking outward with curiosity, humor, and a willingness to follow language wherever it leads.

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Atrocious Poems A To Z

Atrocious Poems A to Z explores the everyday injustices of childhood through a collection of humorous poems and illustrations that take children's complaints very seriously indeed. From monsters under the bed to the tyranny of naps, each poem examines a different childhood "atrocity" while introducing readers to the rich world of poetry and language. Along the way, young readers will encounter literary devices such as personification, paradox, portmanteau, alliteration, metaphor, and more—presented through engaging poems written in a variety of traditional forms. Equal parts poetry collection, literary playground, and educational adventure, Atrocious Poems A to Z offers a fun and memorable introduction to the tools writers use to make language sing. Perfect for curious readers, aspiring poets, teachers, and parents, this delightfully rebellious alphabet of complaints proves that learning about poetry can be just as entertaining as arguing against bedtime.

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The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company

Originally published in 2012, The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company is a whimsical children's picture book about a boy, a herd of dancing rhinoceroses, and the unexpected consequences of imagination set loose.

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