Yayoi Kusama–Infinity Dots Mirrored Room (1996) by Rochelle Hurt
Associate editor Heath Joseph Wooten on today’s bonus piece: Rochelle Hurt’s ekphrastic poem has an unexpected imagistic impulse and a relentless pace. The poem’s powerful voice is intimate but at the same time as mysterious and infinite as the source material suggests.
Yayoi Kusama–Infinity Dots Mirrored Room (1996)
adhesive dots, black light, formica, mirrors
[o i love this one i say as we enter into redgreenblue. scrubs on our feet because even the floors are for looking. hard to find yourself in here so we take selfies. wave to feel in your body. the obliterative power of mirrors, kusama says. but the parts i want to obliterate i can’t see in here. i think: no faces is just the right lighting sometimes. i once loved a woman who didn’t understand how i could have loved so many people in my lifetime. by loved she meant slept with. by she i mean you. too many can also be none, you know. duck duck goose or dot dot nothing. in my throat always this ellipsis. in my body a lobby for people-keeping: wait in line to infinity me. they think i’m letting them inside. when the wall opens, surprise: another mirrored room. was this all just vestibule? we’re a few syllables from infinitesimal now so why not come thru. sex can be a hobby of mimicry, of posing: mannequin to mannequin. these ones look pocked, allergic to all this obfuscation. naked but it’s the dirty wigs that make us uncomfortable. don’t get too close. no faces is just the right lighting sometimes. in ten years, whose arm will i find pinned to mine in the photo? time to go. the only exit is back where we started and that takes waiting too. like mints, a bowl of infinite minutes at every threshold. i always grab two. by we i mean don’t worry—each time i’m with someone i don’t love i’m imagining you.]
Rochelle Hurt is the author of three poetry collections: The J Girls: A Reality Show (Indiana University Press 2022), which won the Blue Light Books Prize from Indiana Review; In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street 2016), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize; and The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine 2014). Her work has been included in Poetry magazine and the Best New Poets anthology. She’s been awarded prizes and fellowships from Arts & Letters, Poetry International, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel, and Yaddo. Hurt lives in Orlando and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.
