In his essay on poetry and distraction, Bevis draws our attention to an artwork by R. B. Kitaj. Bevis, focusing on distraction, thinks about the distraction of the lovers in the frame; how their clasped attention to one another is pulled backwards towards an imagined door that has just opened behind them, revealing, perhaps, a threat, or at the very least an unwelcome breach of their solitude.

I follow my own distraction. My gaze is drawn beyond the lovers, towards the background, where the crisp outlines of a coat hanger and light fixture, both empty, can be seen. Even the sturdy, rectangular pose of the window and the black, anonymous hulk of furniture before it seem pointedly fixed alongside the couple's pastel smudge; their hurried, turned, distracted faces.

I am less concerned with them and their story - Who are they and how strong is the bond between them? Have they been caught in the act of something? What might happen to them now? - than I am with the room they have found themselves in, its pinched dimensions, its lurid red walls. Who placed the coat hanger there? Who hammered in the nail it hangs from? Why is there no light bulb? What might exist in the half-white static of the outdoors beyond the window and why can't we see it?

The only aspect of the figures I find as interesting as the forms hemming them in is the woman's ghostly tendril of a hand, crabbing its way around her partner's shoulder. If I was the one walking in, breaking their privacy, that hand might be the first thing I saw, before I turned to leave.