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Christine Rhein: The Art of the Deal
—after The Card Players by Paul Cézanne
Three men sit playing a game, clutching
the cards they hold, the need they feel
to cheat. The biggest man—Elon Musk—
sports a dark, draping cloak, appears proud
of his deep, hidden pockets. His opponents
too—Bezos and Zuckerberg—wear several
layers, as if coming straight from the stage
of the Inauguration, in a rush to wager—
their bets, doubts, faith, all on the table.
There’s no ignoring the fourth man—
the overseer, standing by the wall, smoking
a pipe—his lame attempt at a common-man
disguise, since it’s obvious he’s the one
in charge here—not just any old guy spying
on the shuffled cards. See his eyes, his lips,
the way they reveal no emotion as he waits
for the game to turn heated, for the three
to decide which stakes are worth raising,
which bluffs they’ll dare to risk, dare to call.
They sit spellbound, knowing their host
will soon circle them, steer the winnings,
one way or another, via his looks of disgust
or sudden nods of approval. He’s confident
the players will more than pay him back—
this table and the countless other tables
filled with growing antes, with sacred zeal—
men trying to outsmart luck, fate, greed.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Michael Simms
Cézanne was in his fifties when he undertook a painting campaign devoted to giving memorable form to a subject that inspired the likes of Caravaggio and Chardin. He was determined from the start—as we see in this sturdy Provençal scene—to make it his own. Cézanne carefully crafted this composition from figure studies he had made of local farmhands. Once he had puzzled-out his conception, he continued to fine-tune the poses and positions of the card players, until they—like the four pipes hanging on the wall behind them—each fell perfectly into place. Cézanne channeled the quiet authority he achieved here into a much larger variant (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) and punctuated the series with three works in which he pared away extraneous details to focus his gaze on a pair of players. (Source: The Met).
Poem copyright 2025 Christine Rhein.
Christine Rhein, a former auto engineer, is the author of Wild Flight (Texas Tech University Press). Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily.
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“He’s confident
the players will more than pay him back—” Oh, how terribly true.
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For Trump, every relationship is transactional.
>
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…and Shazzam! Just like that, Christine writes a poem of universal wisdom — such a rare, very rare feat to successfully achieve. And an ekphrastic one, no less!
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Oh I agree. Perfect.
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Laure-Anne, Thank you very much!
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Shazzam, sham, cheating, stealing, and who are ‘we the people’ anyway? The dealers have no time for us.
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Love this. And as it often does, my mind shifts—this time to the Tabbard Inn in Washington DC and their painting in the lobby of pups playing poker ( the Tabbard Inn was a comparatively cheap place to stay, excellent food, and supposedly where our “ leaders” took their “other women”. )
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That cheesy dogs playing poker artwork was the stated favorite of Sam Malone and his barflies at Cheers, on that long ago sitcom. Oh, those days of relative innocence.
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Cheesy dogs is perfect description. How did I miss that?
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Ha! Ha! Would Cézanne be tickled or offended? I certainly enjoyed.
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christine: a perfect concoction for the ship of fools. We are but a game of cards to them. I’ve adored Cezanne most of my life, saw the great show in Philadelphia where the city busses flew around town with his Stilllifes printed on the sides. When I asked the black skycap if I could take the airrport metro directly to the art museum, he smiled at me and said “You gonna go see Shazzam?” I said yes! And he said “I ain’t been yet but I gotta go see him!”
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great anecdote, Sean. Shazzam is the right moniker for Cezanne.
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Christine Rhein’s poem does fine work re-casting Cezanne’s painting. The position of the players, and how the overseer stands with a view of all their hands, takes on the new greediness. In the painting we may have imagined the smug onlooker as perhaps about to offer the players unwanted advice, kibbitzing, annoying. Rhein’s darker vision points us to avarice, not a game of chance. Satire at its finest. Spellbinding too. I raise my hat to toast Christine.
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the poem transforms the painting into an allegory for our current political theater.
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Back in my Vietnam era college days a bunch of us dorm buddies played a weekly poker game, complete with a box of Dutch Masters Cigars. The box featured a Rembrandt painting of Dutch Masters (of finance). One of the poker boys was a budding visual artist, and created an allegorical re-do of the Rembrandt, calling it Such Masters. It featured recognizable war enthusiasts like LBJ, all holding bags of gold, Judas style.
Christine Rhein’s poem brings back the smell of that stale smoke, and our bitter resolve.
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Thank you!
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