from Handshoe
after Max Klinger, Ein Handschuh (Paraphrase on the finding of a glove)
guiding my tongue
from glove to gift-love
extending the prosthetic
hand of affection
on the one hand
there persists a problem here
did the glove fit
torn in pieces
rather than drawn on
on the other hand
I am naked
quietly resting on a table
unhooking
this external organ
passing it
from one hand
to the other
from lover
to beloved
object
monarch to subject
servant to master
and the
putting on the glove
as in
this virtue is put on
treated
as a form
of inscription in itself
occupying our absent hands
in the manufacture
of the immaterial
*
saying
that the glove is enough
enough for us
enough for itself
and not
as a second glove
but as the sense
of this glove
this cunning glove
a jointed
superficial
operation
or the abyss
inside the magic glove
and what is
the story that it tells
bring back
the glove
throw the glove
in the face of
*
I drawn out
into
and across
growing out from its skin
the existing configurations of
a mental glove
an intimate involvement
in the glove of another
smelling
touching
tasting
each faculty grasps
what in the glove
concerns it
brings it into
something in the glove
how can this game be played
a game of musical statues
stopping the music
and discovering the glove
the pregnant depths
seeded from on high
giving birth
to it
*
an interval
of silence in
a piece of music
a theoretical cloud of
icy planetismals
loosed
from a block of code
which affects
not only
how one plays
the sliding piece
a paradigm shifting
how things happened
a bridge to
my dear white glove
you perform
the dirty deeds
I will to keep my poor hands clean
sincerely yours
G. Love
Patricia Farrell is a poet and visual artist. She has collaborated with other writers and artists, most notably Robert Sheppard, as well as the installation artist Jivan Astfalck, on the project B*twixst, exhibited in Birmingham, Portsmouth and Cologne, and A Space Completely Filled with Matter with the dancer Jennifer Cobbing. Her collection, The Zechstein Sea, was published by Shearsman in 2013 and her latest publication is High Cut: My Model of No Criteria (Leafe Press 2018). She completed a PhD thesis in 2011 on poetic artifice in philosophical writing.
