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David Kinloch

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4 Shifts

after paintings by Alison Watt after portraits by Ingres

1  Metaphysical Tango

Tango my sheets
Tiny fold: out reach
Their shy tangent
Before a swivel
Tugs them in.

Trip up an evanescent
Half-smile as it catches
My absent presence
 – present absence -
Out, nicked by the swag’s
Vast pleats.

I is not there is it
An other elsewhere
 

2 Erotic Duck

Ruck-up, side-step, purse and
Pucker before she trails…
Magniloquently.
Ah night-gown!
What a wash
On the raw cotton duck!
Desirable tactility
Chez Moitessier, Rivière, Tour
Non, dishevelled Sabine
And her malev(i)olent
Eye blossom

That voluptuous pudeur
…You can imagine such hands…
Carmine camée
That prima donna pull
Away, drague drag,
A  re-staging -
Half-serious, half-shielding, half-
Giving - unrosebudding
In the suculent obscenity
Of tongues deserted
Among marble halls.
 

3   Dangerous pockets

If you stare for long enough
At dangerous pockets
A stamen will stick out
And lick you with its fine, hairy stipple
In the most intimate of

In there you can just
Hear the clickety click click
Of a miniature sewing bee
- By Ucello perhaps -
Where the knights have downed
Their lances and stitch up
The folds of blue and rose mazzochi
To keep their faces shady.
 

4   Zwiefalt 

Here is the lip and the sag
The deliberate drape of
Zwichen-fall
Becoming Zwiefalt
The surface deep
Deepening to surface
Once again. Oh shift
Me into this Fuscum
Subnigrum!

I want to be
Down there in there
Enveloped by these
White flaps which tip
Slips into me.

Tango away bright Moitessier!
Blind me cool Rivière
To the sarky work
Of this suspended shift.

'Zwiefalt' is a term used by Heidegger to refer to the folded nature of being. It is discussed briefly by Gilles Deleuze in his book, Le Pli, about Leibniz and the Baroque.
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