Art History
BY CATHERINE BARNETT
“I’m scared,” Yayoi Kusama cried out,
“Somebody, please come.”
This was the 1980s in New York City
and you know who lay beside her,
to soothe her? On Kawara,
who destroyed his painting
every night at midnight if he hadn’t finished it yet.
“I am still alive!” he wrote in his telegrams,
which he considered works of art.
And they were,
and now he’s not,
and now it’s past midnight.
I haven’t begun to finish.
Finish what?
The two mangoes that soften conspicuously?
Going through my papers? This draft?
In class I told my students,
“Listen, I’m not the Doctor of Clarity.”
But I am trying to be clear—
On Kawara is no longer alive.
The city air smells like urine.
We are each one of us autonomous
nervous systems of yearning.
Last year I stood in a long line to enter
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room,
a darkened 10′ x 12′ room lined with mirrors,
strung with LED lights and acrylic balls,
and for my allotted time I
saw myself repeated into infinity,
which is different from the task at hand,
which is to accept finitude.
I have two irises, two nipples, a first,
a middle, and a last name—
it’s not like I’ve ever wished for more.
I have no trouble tossing out the shishito peppers
or the dry cleaner’s handwritten tag
with an ex’s name still flashing its safety pin.
(I kept the safety pin.)
Was it climbing the stairs that kept me
from Kusama’s other room, Longing for Eternity?
Or was it a question of time?
This year I didn’t even have time for Valentine’s Day,
though I liked looking around at all the little dogs
in their rubber booties, and all the passing faces,
some of which surely will be models for paintings
no one buys at estate sales that seem more frequent now.
Terribly frequent.
I am still alive!
And the estate liquidators keep flooding my inbox.
Some charge a flat-rate fee,
others work by percentages
and let you choose your own date.
Put me down for not yet.
Like everyone else, I didn’t want to leave
the Infinity Room, the guard knocks
and says it’s time to go, while upstairs
the line usually moves more quickly.
From what I can tell, Longing for Eternity
is not an immersive experience,
you just peek in, there is no god.
There is no guard to accompany you,
no guide to ferry you along.
Awe
BY CATHERINE BARNETT
Celebratory,
gently onomatopoetic,
almost indecorous, the words a pleasure
to repeat—everyone said it,
“the whole shebang”—
but if what Skeat said was true, if shebang first meant
“temporary shelter,” if all of
it is only temporary…
I didn’t like to think about it.
Beneath the blue whale,
at the Museum of Natural History,
I understood I was a small lone figure swept up in waves.
The whale wore 600 pounds of paint.
I wore waterproof mascara and Geox,
the metal eyelets flickering on the floor
beneath her ten tons.
I wore those shoes everywhere
but did not wear through their breathable
membrane, which someone thought to patent.
Isn’t it wonderful that the soles
breathe, like all animals?
Like the speechless human animal
bending now to double-knot the laces
as the black sneakers collect dust,
the dust of exhalation.
Exultation.
It seemed everything was breathing,
even the blue skylights with their blue bulbs,
the passers-by in the vast family hall.
Beneath her body we walked beside other bodies,
we walked away, we planned to return,
safe in our temporary chambers.
