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.