Blind Date: Poetic Response to Renoir

DC-based writer Kate Horowitz penned this poem about about visit Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party after a visit to the museum in January 2017. It was originally published in Qu Literary Magazine. 

Blind Date, Phillips Collection Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81) by Kate Horowitz 

 She is frightened. Surely, something has happened. She has just come from somewhere where something has happened. Hands at her face, holding her spinning head. She is flushed, pinch-browed, squinting hard out onto the water. She is not alone: there are men mere inches from her mouth, simultaneously shushing and asking what has happened, shush, what has happened, an arm around her waist, shhh, they don’t want answers, they want an arm around her waist, their beards by her hot mouth, and yes, she is stammering, but shhh, she will not be for long, this will blow over, nothing has happened, shhh, shhh, Jeanne, shhh— One hundred thirty-five years later it has not blown over, the men are shushing still, Jeanne, she is still frightened, something has happened, but the museum guide will say the men “seem to be flirting”; the museum guide will not say what Jeanne is doing, or where she was before, or even that something has happened and when I, pinch-browed, standing before the painting, spot her for the first time, I say something has happened, she is upset, and the man mere inches from my mouth turns from my pointing and says, Look at that adorable dog