Ceci N’est Pas . . .
A magic marker that leaves black smudges on the index finger.
A cat just in from the back patio, her eyes wide, a leaf in her mouth.
An idea, a slug on a plate left outside, a slime, a slowly devoured
particle once inhabiting the nucleus of a cell that has burst with age.
This is not even an apple. Or a pipe. Or a man descending from the
cloudless sky, holding an open umbrella over his head, a god almost
late for his next manifestation, where the trolleys have stopped running,
where soot settles from factory chimneys and counterfeit tears streak
a prostitute’s face. This is not me or you or the hubcap that popped off
a rear wheel in the approach to Teatown Reservation, clattering against
an ancient rock. Wobbling to a halt. What this is hums like a song,
falls silent after the blare of the test siren at the nuclear plant. Not
the cry of immigrants at a dock, their children taken away, a foreign
language scrawled on their papers, no one anyone, everyone waiting. 
Ceci N’est Pas . . .
“I Reject All Likeness . . . ”
La Moustache