In Women of Tahiti, one woman sports a peony-pink shift,
the other a cherry-red frock splattered with white floppy flowers.
The shift is a missionary shift. The frock is traditional.
The placard says we cannot understand them.

Why are Gaughin's women so sullen, so markedly pissed, I asked
before I knew he was fucking them.

Endless blathering about sin and guilt, penitence and pain. Catholicism.
Spirit-watched, she dips her hair in a stream of jagged flamingo.

King Pomare V is dying (symbol of ancient tradition),
but the dying’s been going on 100 years, the church
long ago banning carving, piercing, tattooing, dancing.
In exchange: famine, alcohol, war.

Yellow lilies in a flaxen sky. She holds a blue blossom. Weary.
Cadaverous figures made of wood and bone, modeled from his dreams.
Ribs visible through the skin. A severed female head. Lavender flames.       

Girl-women. Broad blocks of timeless daily life.
Universal flowering, a lyrically loose crimson dress
concealing voluptuousness, but not the tears.

Amber sarong. Blue sarong. Purple hill.
What the horse whispered to the pig,
beneath bare branches, grazing.

__

About eight years ago I was invited by Seattle Writers in the Schools to participate in a series of K-12 writing sessions in conjunction with a SAM Gauguin/Tahitian art exhibit. All workshop leaders attended a training/informational session and were permitted to visit the exhibit as much as they wanted. The workshop I facilitated with local high school students was a blast, but I recall being horrified when I learned that paintings like When Will You Marry? and Where Are You Going? were not only created by a sadist/ rapist/ pedophile, but that the Edenic portrait of Tahiti Gauguin depicted in his work was a sham.  My poem is a result of these and other revelations, along with the detailed notes I took during several visits to the show.