Ted Landrum

SHORT CUT THROUGH A CITY CEMETERY

for Sina Queyras

the world last night
is the glow shelter

lame he was and is no colder

you who know
hit upon new

i for i
have left

crap thru
free self

what judge of death
stars then tilt
the casket

loud
your hand
did

one damn troll
the moon me
among these stone graves
a slum opossum

among our absence need advances

glass child faces
who cannot sleep
as swift milk of the trees
here
is our loss

shall I go down
sighing
still

This found/erasure poem steals (twice) through a recycled collage poem made by Sina Queyras called “Elegy Written in a City Cemetery” in M x T (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2014): 81-82.

LIT BY GLASS

our hands stop open
ying across solitude

come closer
as they small on entering

pull of a distant room

lights of a passing you
can reach it

now


This found/erasure poem renovates and condenses the title poem of Charles Simic’s Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (NY: Braziller, 1974): 61.

Ted Landrum is a self proclaimed archi-poet (and critic) currently building a collection of “archi-poems” called Midway Radicals and an online research archive at ubuloca.com.  He teaches as a sessional instructor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Manitoba (whenever they let him). His writing has been published internationally in print and online venues, including: CV2, On Site review, The Winnipeg Review, Rhubarb, The Brooklyn Rail (USA), Edge Condition (UK) ); and several poems and recordings may be found on websites maintain by the University of Manitoba’s School of Art and Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. Three of his “archi-poems” form the afterword to a book of academic essays, called Quality Out of Control: Standards for Measuring Architectural Quality (Routledge, 2010).