Sandwiched between the sidewalk and an upper floor,
she was drinking in an afternoon that was making her
uneasy. The situation was further complicated
by the proximity to the dilemma
of whether to chance the unstable elevator.
How else to get back to where she’d begun?
It occurred to her that every dilemma
goes into the river of consciousness with lipstick on
a tissue, a rat in the basement, a man on the street.
Meanwhile, someone was talking to her
while first names kept flashing by in a cracked mirror
whenever she blinked. Across the room, a man
who looked like a younger form of Freud was saying,
“—consciousness-wise, the doctor is no worse
and no better than a novel
that wants you to know every chapter
once was titled ‘The Moment Is the State Suspended.’”