Gauguin In Ketchikan



Gauguin’s walking stick

was tipped like a

plumber’s iron, good 

for probing puddles 

pocking Dock Street

or prodding spawned-out 

salmon washed up 

on Ketch Creek


The shape of a shoe

once popular in Manhattan

formed a grip from which

flowed a nude, her back 

arched to a curve

hair billowy and fine-grained

the belly-button made 

with a knife’s prick


Below her feet a snake

wrapped the shaft to the base

where it ended in the mouth of a frog

which impressed no one from

the curio shops above the wharf--

those ideas having been stolen

with the otters and the totems

a hundred years before


The pawnshop man said

a boat heading south in a week 

might have room if you knew

how to cook or patch seine


He took his souvenirs: a key chain, a case 

of V.D., a set of worn out chisels 

Made in Japan

stamped on the tang