SF ssuojs apo pun quay pen deg saunuaye, uo asseur ua passry wana fou "no Sop 0} wopaary Aur yim Ayuepyos ur Kjasisoad sayeo yuequnog paeys avy —ajdoad jo speoy ‘oydood Koy, wounysypoque weg 1oyj0 BuyypAue a |>3p uy puv s Cangsureg ye su 20U pInoys nok sspj 04, Yoor aup o} Suyjaadun yuai9M spuEY Surproy apdoad moj ayy, -premsoy paddays | sv aapinoys oy Suraey jo Aowour © sacy y BuIpys 40 “Butsjorar Soy) 21944 ‘Stoop Buyajoaas ay Jo ano ysnf suo uly pur Apease spuey Surpjoy ajdoad mos yseay ye ua9s aavy | 9 sy tuo paeSuey pue ypuoy e saute> ay ye Uosear atp JOU S AEN, “Supers you sta} auEpuane Azaqpe3 ay oge PUT ,UPIMOYS | osipexdurt jo 895 yns aAloaur JOU Pinoys NOK ssPy OY, (Aen }oBpug Ag yuu JO 1U014 UI NOA sip} JOULED | PU | YOY JO) 9]0lUWS 6 sworn fata YP dod pansqe ‘4x048 © paprozar | pue astm Aww parpay Yeap Aur wt za8uy Aur ynd | /afSue ypauso> ayp ye sem auoydosona aun eM Susu, ;paureyse [29j 10U PIP T Pue ‘IPAr op snpord arp uy aureu Kur jo 9pey atp pur ‘BuyT}29 woospaq Aww Jo saysed payers ayy mnoge 1ySnorp | 32>}00THO Paypop> atop pue ajdnoa payeu ayy Jo aumpord op ve aun jeuy e PayOo| | “s]aAa] ay yay OF Pres T ow avo ‘own AUD, -mopuyas une aur pry e ypUEIa 2am axp Pres UAL, atop 0 gaan non 3c 4909 2 yd 25024 soy[eu Joy 0} Surdes ag 01 pouraas ays az0ut at ‘uorssadx9 sang ye paxoo} | axour ayy, “azoyandzan0 SiapPA-gH WEIN 0) pue Upjs uroqesau Uo saysnagnured yos 0} aINqEH PUES inom yeyp punos e puy o} paem y ‘Suruzour Surdums9s -Ujs 8 Jo spnop uors-axoyeq-uuTeD ayy EaUAG aed SE, nepiges atau, “sainSyy op puokeg s{Hy paroqurowiay onjq autos 10 Kremqyn 5,941 & Jo uoRse8Sns axp st x94] Yoout oysoddequos sprang Jo uorsraa afe>s-01 xp 10 dutod puea hashtag and everything, When that historian shot himself in Notre Dame two years ago, when Larousse dictionary mooted changing the definition of marriage, he was not thinking about me tarrying in this gallery's gift shop, flicking postcards and studiously not-looking at you. Larousse dictionary's colophon is a woman blowing at a dandelion clock. Have [ used the word coloplion correctly? Where are you? Dandelion comes from the French dent-de-lion, lion's tooth. 1am not biding my time. A lion would not baulk at kissing you, toothily. The French for dandelion is pissenlit. This translates, broadly, as wot the bed. Twill w could kiss you lightly, the side of your face, as if putting outa fire, The gallery attendant is not looking at us. I have spotted another couple not only holding hands but kissing, a boy andl girl like it was nothing, like they didn't have to think about lions. When you puff at a dandelion clock, puff at its pull, it looks like you are blowing a kiss, To kiss you would be plotlessness, and nothing like falling. The gallery attendant 46 Eley Williams is not sizing up our haircuts. In fact, he's looking the other way. ‘The move was mine to make, all gallery-hushed and happy as I reached for you and RIGHT Lers but out of the comer of my cordoned-off sight, my ~all my resolution— is suddenly just right angles—an eyeline a little botched — what is all this— this jaw swerve chicanery and all at once its sugar cubes and squares of basalt ina line, monochrome shapes aligned as teeth in a first taste of ict sucker punch that crazy-paves the direct route that I stand here having steeled myself when I would will every word be cursive and supple and tender but now all Aitrib, and other stories 47my letters are strung out with rigid symmetry, bending, tined as the strongest parts of my spine finding the spin of optic tic-shout unframing itself beyond your ear, behind your ear, [THIS IS ALREADY RATHER EMBARRASSING BECAUSE] how could you frame such a thing, I mean a painting, or a print, that has thumbed such a serried bank of vacuums into the wall just by being nailed there, there, where I can see something in this painting rolling along the though the muscles in the chew of a maw (that is maw M-A-W not A-M-O-R-E, if you were asking, but you're not, you're looking, not at me nor at the lion-couple you are just clear-eyed and looking at a beyondness) made of lines on a wall—I did not know hand could hold hand but also not-hold like this, standing in a gallery, when looking at a painting so regular and simple, not-looking directly at ‘you and not directly thinking how, how, then, when I move to take your unbold shoulder and the attendant is quite so attendant and the painting is quite so unwatchable I cannot stand to be here looking there stancling in front of a painting the surface of which itches with vertigo, seeing suddenly that there isa weft to its si your shoulder and taking your hand is like trying to taste hands, is painting over wordplay or suffering snow-blindness with y it’s like the Northern Line on the Tube map uni crosshatching thecity andas [steady my eye-line fall for you through straight lines to something hillocked and tussocked and wispy and girdled and girderful and dog-eared because it's all there in black and white, houndstooth fabric spoked clock hands smoothing and then rumpled as over your shoulder the Movement in Squares (1961) by Bridget Riley becomes a vinyl record's surface gleaming white as if the light was bouncing from it but in fact, now, I think it has become a broken disc or spiders! legs across fresh bed linen, tter first person I becoming a forward slash, an a capi exclamation mark becoming a backstroke because I find J cannot kiss you standing by this painting, I would start bleeding salt and pepper although I could imagine kissing you by other gentler, less queer checkerboards, by hazy Hammershai's windowpanes, by Sarah Lucas's Self Portrait ‘with Fried Eggs (1996), by Vermeer's The Allegory of Painting (c. 1665-1668) and in the marble checkerboard-spelt-with-a-k or chequerboard-spelt-with-a-q hallways always queuing-up the next opportunity rather than being quite up for it there, in situ, mindlessly, I have gone too far to pull back, I could kiss you under severe black and white patchwork quilts so why not here, with you wearing black and white gingham and me wearing Walt Jabsco ska-suspenders, working out skunk-back Rubik's Cubes on a headboard, but! I, despite Attrib. and other stories 49)‘myself, I find I am now all mouthfuls of sinister made-for- purpose ludicrous black and white-checked Battenberg cake, I am squaring up, I am not holding you but holding onto you for fear of slipping, parallelographic graphite 2 Stendhal Syndroming at the thought of you by this painting and my lips anywhere near yours, the gallery attendant and his lion eyes and the painting sewing, up my heart with false orthogonals, darts, black runnels in snow made for a moleskin-night-time when to hold you here is a game of chess on a grumbling crumbling glacier, the gambit's gone your way and I am bishop-fumbled rook-to-h, stalemate giddy, I might as well be pushing marzipan through an iron porte ight as well be pushing you up against a snaggle-toothed is, might as well be kissing you through a trellis, I grinning and ruined keyboard with apologies for any \ potholed covers of Abbey Road cross-posting, with album crossings and we cannot arrange the pulp of black ‘and white things like dragon fruit nor custard apples nor humbugs on a plate, ‘not in a gallery, think of the children! and it is Guinness-thick the choke of your hand in mine, all pirated copies of The Seventh Seal that twist and bulge with white noise interface and interference, ike dandelion seeds on velvet, the night, like vanilla pods and is as strange as the squeak of it: somethin, like lions’ breath steaming 50 Eley Williams icing sugar, something like black rye bread grout-thick with white butter, something like black kelp crawling up against the humped sea foam on a white tide, a nocturne's stave in a key made mazy and thick with dieses, a printout made tweedy with hashtags, my hand, clumsy with a melting tessellation, I think, goddammit Bridget Riley (1961), my hand with a melting tessellation could feed you crushed Oreos and moon parings, my hand not quite in yours, but not yet quite out, the starting flag at the race track when a white flag, ‘means surrender and Black Flag means punk bands formed in seventies California and I cannot tell whether you or I are leaning now nor if the attendant is approaching or I just the falling and unfair taut roiling of a painting, its good lines like tarmac heating through a drift of snow or a sky thick and slick with black and white Portia protodice butterflies, piebald horses on an oil slick, and in this second’s thought I could have—rather than grown anxious and aware of the attendant— dreamt of dressing you in coats trimmed with lemur tails and em dashes, comer you in fields filled and frilled with Friesian ‘cows and badgers! scalps and California king snakes, and this is absurd, this is all absurd and that's the power of it, the checking of my hand in your hand because I'm sure there are rales about this kind of thing on a noticeboard somewhere, think he is, or if I am staggering int Attrib. and other stories 51that we can ignore, and others can misread and be there in black and white, the empty page so daunting, the full page so disappointing, a new moon seen through eyelashes or many moons grated by one eyelash welted and unbelted and wrought through space's hot static of white noise's rough and tumble tumbril wheelings, the white and black of it bletting the Whitsun eiderdown even as I watch it, the pairing of us before this painting, behind your shoulder, through your hair, striations, despite the gallery attendant Jeaning in—I cannot find the angle of your jaw in a way that isn't calming: I do not want to calm any part of you in this gallery when this painting could autocorrect the clouds outside the Tate into order, make us greyscale and plaid- eyed and with ears full of Sillitoe Tartan's klaxon blare or all new ceramic and sable-fur, like eggshells on the kerbside, like charcoal in the cream, like bone in the coffee where headlong, and garbled, on the gallery wall, geometry curdles and all that I am, you have made italie. Holding you here is to make a chequered past. I will never be brave and I cannot kiss you by this painting, 52 Eley Williams ‘You have leaned in, and have kissed me without even thinking about like itis the thing in the world and you stark me and I am strobe-hearted and as you move on to the next painting and the gallery tendant fiddles ith his watch, a Bridget Riley grows le cooler on the wall and all in all you spectrum me, unexpectedly. Altrib. and other stories 53,