Acknowledgements Some of these poems have appeared in The Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt), Blackbox Manifold, Flux, Gutter , Irish Pages, Mollosus, New Writing Scotland, Out There (Freight, 2014), and PN Review.  The twopart sequence ‘Some Women’ was first published as a pamphlet by Happenstance Press in 2014. The Orpheus poems are a response to the exhibition Hide and Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture that took place at the National Portrait Gallery,  Washington dc in 2011.The author is grateful to its curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward for help afforded during its composition and to The Arts and Humanities Research Council for a Fellowship that made its writing possible. Thanks also to Eric, Gerry McGrath, Helena Nelson, Richard Price and Robert Crawford. 79