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I am in
Disguise.
Reflective surfaces reveal
impossibility;
the probability of
delusion
Since the glass is right
recall is wrong.
I must be
in disguise. I am
the burrow for the mass that experienced
what my reflected body cannot
have seen.
I've become fond of daisy and tussock
patterns on trace-mildewed bathroom wallpaper
adhered to baseboards at exactly
my height.
Behind the door no one opens for
propriety. Once a visit
home. Leaning over the bowl then
below it even on stretched legs.
All contrast is new in shifting. There
is nothing to become used to, only
fond of, like a dream.
Present here in acrylic, cotton,
mousse, and leather on my feet, where
no leather grows in truth, just fur, to cover the sole,
purely I am protected. I don't need
to tell you a thing.
Held in tight to a naked hiding-place,
where my ears are flat
against my skull but not in fear, my eyes a hunter's.
I am a safe place.
It's not for lack of knowing that
I pause, almost to tell you
what you cannot recognize
unless I form the words myself out of who among us morphs,
who drinks, who startles,
vomits into or shoots up drugs over
bleached ceramic.
Scraping a place in a shape
which has been here all along, replacing
its reactions with my own,
resting inside it and appearing
like any number of relatives
at the fringe of an evergreen hedge or shade of a tumbleweed,
eyes that match my own, ears--
thinner than light-- that convey meaning.
I stand with my forepaws inside pointed,
pointing finger-palm combinations and
my tail melted off and my eyes incapable of
viewing what my real mind remembers.
Some of you, a few of you,
do not recede into forms out of your histories.
My kind are good at hiding.
you would let me, wouldn't you? The same
as you pass by shallow dark places and allow
the watching creature inside to remain,
not a part of anything, the hole itself
the pure reality. I am
the thing this untanned hide contains.
I don't have to tell you this.
Lagomorph. Lago
'morphic. Lago--
morph. I eye you
curiously.
lago.
morphic. Morph.
Rabbit.
It's a dandy disguise, of skin and hair,
shirts, marbled buttons,
slacks, hard shoes and buffed nails.
Do I look anything like myself to you?
Oh, please, brer Fox, there's just
one thing I couldn't abide.
Please don't throw me in the
Gallery opening reception.
Please oh please don't make me buy art and wear
suits and go home for Thanksgiving.
I'm good, aren't I? Like Rabbit in the patch.
Only better. Can you see?
Look human, don't I.
To show it, I have to say it:
Morphic-- lagomorphic.
I don't know what you all are--
all
of you.
So let's begin, shall we?
Hello, my name is Francis.
And I have
Stein's Chronic Accelerated Biomorphic Syndrome.
Now, everybody,
all together:
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