It’s supposed to be spring but the sky
might as well be a huge rock floating
in the sky. I’m the guy who always forgets
to turn his oven off pre-heat but I might
as well be the one with the apple in front
of his face or the one with Botticelli’s
Flora hovering at his back, scattering
her unlikely flowers. Which is worse?
to have your vision forever blocked or
forever to miss what everyone else can
see, the stunning Kick Me sign hanging
from your back? Is there anything more
ridiculous than choosing between despairs?
Part of me is still standing in the falling
snow with my burning chicken. In a black slip,
a woman despairs in front of her closet
five minutes before the guests arrive.
In the tub, a man sobs, trying to re-read
a letter that’s turning into mush. Despair
of rotten fruit, of bruised fruit. The despair
of having a bad cat, garbage strewn over
your shoes, sofa in shreds. Despair of saying,
You bet I hate to part with him but I’m
joining the Peace Corps, to the girl who
calls about the ad. The despair of realizing
despair may be a necessary pre-condition
of joy which complicates your every thought
just as someone screaming in the hall, Get
away from me, complicates the lecture on
Wallace Stevens. Ghostlier demarcations,
keener sounds. Wallace Stevens causes despair
for anyone trying to write a poem or a book
called Wallace Stevens and the Interpersonal.
Sometimes interpersonal despair may lead to
a lengthy critical project’s completion but how
could Jessica leave me in 1973 after pledging
those things in bed, after the afternoon looking
at Magrittes? The tuba on fire. The bottle with
breasts. Didn’t I wander the streets half the night,
hanging out at the wharf, afraid of getting beat up
just to forget that one kiss in front of the bio-
morphic shape with the sign saying Sky in French.
The stone table and stone loaf of bread. The room
filled with a rose. Loving someone who does not
love you may lead to writing impenetrable poems
and/or staying awake until dawn, drawn to airy,
azure rituals of space ships and birds.
Some despairs may be relieved by other despairs
as in not knowing how to pay for psychoanalysis,
as in wrecking your car, as in this poem. Please
pass me another quart of kerosene. A cygnet
is a baby swan. Hat rack, cheesecake, mold.
The despair of wading through a river at night
toward a cruel lover is powerfully evoked
in Chekhov’s story “Agafya.” The heart seems
designed for despair especially if you study
embryology while being in love with your lab
partner who lets you kiss her under the charts
of organelles but doesn’t respond yet
later you think she didn’t not respond either
which fills you with idiotic hope very like
despair just as a cloud can be very like
a cannon, the way it starts out as a simple
tube then ties itself into a knot. The heart,
I mean. It seems, for Magritte, many things
that are not cannons may be called cannons
to great effect. David’s despair is ongoing
and a lot like his father’s, currently treated
with drugs that may cause disorientation and
hair loss. Men in white coats run from
the burning asylum. No, wait, it’s not burning,
it’s not an asylum, it’s a parking lot
in sunset and they want you to pay. Sometimes
Rick thinks Nancy joined the Peace Corps just
to get away from him so later he joins the Peace Corps
to get away from someone else, himself it turns out,
and wades into a river where tiny, spiny fish
dart up your penis if you piss in the river.
Don’t piss while in the river is a native saying
he thinks at first is symbolic. The despair
of loving may lead to long plane rides with
little leg room, may lead to a penis full
of fish, a burning chicken, a room filled
with a single pink rose. Funny how
we think of it as a giant rose instead
of a tiny room.