In the ebuild: DEPEND="gpm? ( sys-libs/gpm )" and no equivalent RDEPEND entry.
should be all set now in the tree; thanks for the report! Commit message: Make sure gpm is in RDEPEND too http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/ncurses/ncurses-5.9-r2.ebuild?r1=1.1&r2=1.2