Corey Van Landingham

cujus est solum ejus usque ad coelum
—13TH C. common law
 
Before man dreamed up the flying machine
we owned the air as far above our land

as we could imagine. Up to infinity. Down
to hell. Because air, in the days of tangible

property, was nothing. No foot had emerged
from a lander onto the foreign terrain

of the moon. No satellites passing over the hostas.
The act of a horse, law says,

reaching his head into an adjoining field
and biting another horse is a trespass.

A word, freed from the lips, is in the air
a trespass. Now, in a country divvying up

the sky, unmanned machines will be given
innocent passage. People will walk around

whispering dominium as if to control at least
their breath. So, before the space of utterance

is duly regulated, before the 83 feet of air
we own above our heads begins its collapse,

this: I love you from the depth of the earth
to the height of the sky. I love you upon

land immovable, soil open to exploitation
by all. I am for your unreasonable use alone.

And, when the wingèd gods finally interfere
with your possessor's enjoyment, to an

indefinite extent, I'll remember a time when
men were the ones doing harm with

their own hands. I'll remember the words I once
had to give to you, on the porch, in private.
from the book LOVE LETTER TO WHO OWNS THE HEAVENS / Tupelo Press
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Black-and-white headshot of Morgan Parker
In Conversation with Morgan Parker

"In my writing I try to collapse time. It’s part of putting everything on the same plane: high and low art, pop and philosophy, comedy and tragedy, personal and political, past and present. One thing echoes another; it’s impossible not to hear an echo. I try to create juxtaposition and conversation by bringing all the echoes into the chorus. Letting the dead speak, I guess." 

via MCSWEENEY'S
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Amaud Jamaul Johnson's handwritten copy of "A Lovely Love"
What Sparks Poetry: 
Amaud Jamaul Johnson on Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Lovely Love"

"I was twenty and an undergraduate at Howard University, taking Dr. Jon Woodson’s Survey of African American Poetry. He was suspicious of labels and spent the first weeks of class arguing against his own course title. His first lecture began with a summary dismissal of Maya Angelou, who a year earlier was Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Poet. He would hand out poems with the authors’ names blacked out, and ask: “What makes this a Black poem, or is this good or bad?” We had to defend our answers. Our shortcomings were immediately evident. This is how I was introduced to Gwendolyn Brooks’s 'A Lovely Love.'"
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