Ars Poetica by Corey Van Landingham

In the sad little garden
of William Paca, where the period
roses have been yanked out
for refusing their modern soil,
the nearby holly bushes are nothing
but restraint—pruned
and placed between the cement
path’s spokes. From a window,
one can view the geometric designs
demonstrating what control
humans have over the pear tree,
the errant hibiscus blooming hot
in late October. “It seems to me,”
Keats wrote in a letter, “that we should rather
be the flower than the bee.”
That we should rather receive, not take,
the world. I should not ask
for your good mouth
in the morning but find it with pleasant
surprise, perfect repose.
And your being above me, glorious
in this light, over my head, should make me
a mortal that falls back to gaze on you.
Consider Simone, sitting
in Toulouse’s garden, bathed in sunlight,
where everything was agreeable.
“This fine weather, these flowers, this charming
little house.” She felt “quite softened.”
Signed each letter with a little
kiss and waited years to hold again
Jean-Paul’s little arm.
And we, who are not unlike the garden,
who have our own sad history, are given
the language of past lovers who acted
out their roles. More light and light
it grows, the pears so ripe
they drop and rot,
slick, sun-opened. Shall I
so govern sentiment?
Wake and watch the tourists
shuffle by, contain myself
to not reach out and touch them?
Love, I am not ashamed. How I prefer
to tell you exactly what I want.

Corey Van Landingham is the author of Antidote and Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, forthcoming from Tupelo Press. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and teaches at the University of Illinois.