Walking Through the Upper East Side

All over the district, on leather couches

& brocade couches, on daybeds

& 'professional divans,' they are confessing.

The air is thick with it,

the ears of analysts must be sticky.



Words fill the air above couches & hover there

hanging like smog. I imagine

impossible Steinberg scrolls,

unutterable sounds suspended in inked curlicues

while the Braque print & the innocuous Utrillo

look on look on look on.



My six analysts for example-



the sly Czech who tucked his shoelaces

under the tongues of his shoes,

the mistress of social work with orange hair,

the famous old german who said:

'You sink, zerefore you are,'

the bouncy American who loved to talk dirty,

the bitchy widow of a famous theoretician,

& another-or was it two?-I have forgotten-

they rise like a Greek chorus in my dreams.

They reproach me for my messy life.

They do not offer to refund my money.



& the others-siblings for an hour or so-

ghosts whom I brushed in & out of the door.

Sometimes the couch was warm from their bodies.

Only our coats knew each other,

rubbing shoulders in the dark closet.