Lovely Cow Patty Town

Bobbi Ann Mlynar—

Retains that lovely rather

Bleak Kansas outlook

Right out of that Grant Woods—

“American Gothic” rather stark

depressing Kansas painting

Returning to Emporia once—

After graduating from college

I took a little bike ride

To reminisce and enjoy—

The sweet memories of my

Kansas bildungsroman boyhood

West of town past the old—

Anderson Shit Yard & the gone

Roller Rink on Old Hwy 50

My grandfather Larkin—

Former County Commissioner

Once lived way out there

The Doodlebug tootle-loo’d—

Down by the Santa Fe tracks

It was quite Idyllic, my dears

Madame Mlynar lived—

Way out there, sitting on her

Steps bored as I went by

She didn’t wave at me—

Her big dog attacked me &

Bit me on my little footsy

She sat there on her big—

Fat ass, sneering grimly at

My tres painful predicament

She’d never much liked me—

There at EHS and probably

Despised me like all the rest

That same grim gothic look—

On her pinched mayoral face

Simply said it all, my dears

It epitomizes for me—

The Stoic Americana gothic

Attitude of Red State Kansas

Right out of that Grand Wood—

Stark painting or even worse

Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”

It was then and there—

That I swore I’d never ever

Return to the Fly Over State

Along with Hostess Twinkies—

And Saccharine Sweet Ding Dongs

Adieu, Goodbye to Cow Patty Town

Capote

IN COLD BLOOD

—Richard Avedon's contact sheets 
from 1960 photo session 
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2005/12/millers_crossin.php 

1

There’s always been—
I suppose a certain hoodlum
Element to the American West

The Dick Hickock types—
Robbing, killing, hanging
Around the Western scene

Where else could young—
Prison con-artists go but
“Go West, youngman!”

Avedon’s portraits capture—
With amazing accuracy
These American West killers

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

2

Cocky Dick Hickock—
His name oozes with
American West violence

He possesses that—
Sullen young hoodlum
Insolent male beauty

A lop-sided face—
Victim of a car accident
His twisted goodlooks

One eye so gimpy—
It both breaks your
Heart and scares you

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

3

These other shots—
Most people don’t get to
See them very often

Or maybe they don’t—
Want to see the look in
Dick Hickock’s eyes

Dick takes along his—
Hired gun killer lover
Perry Smith the Gimp

All the way out to—
Holcomb KS to rob the
Wealthy Clutter family

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

4

Prison life turns—
A man’s sex life into
A twisted tattoo thing

Dick is str8t and—
Like the young stuff
While Perry likes Dick

They end up broke—
Down in Mexico on the
Run after the murders

They get nabbed in—
Las Vegas in a hot car
Truman is waiting

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

5

To Kill a Mockingbird—
Was a lot easier to write than 
Capote’s In Cold Blood


Harper Lee’s novel was a—
Great success story leaving
Truman green with jealousy

Taking the Super Chief west—
Spending long cold nights
In a Garden City motel

Gradually the form of his—
Nonfiction novel took shape
Twisted, gnarled love story

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

6

Perry Smith slowly became—
Truman’s kept man there
Behind those prison bars

Like two lost brothers—
Suddenly discovering each
Other for the very first time

Capote greased the palms—
To get into Perry’s dingy
Prison suite to make love

The nonfiction element in—
The novel In Cold Blood was
The killer’s pouty sweet lips

Richard Avedon, Portraits
Portfolio: Dick Hickock 

7

They say that when—
You drop you don’t
Feel a fucking thing

But it took 30 minutes—
For their hearts to stop
Beating, strangling them

They also say that when—
Your neck snaps hard in
The Hangman’s tight noose

That a guy shoots his—
Last extra-long spastic
Wad all the way Dead

Capote

In Cold Blood

—for Truman Capote

Time—who needs a tornado to get to the land of oz when all one needs is a game of bridge on a lonely saturday night some nice absinthe ice tea & dreams of murder 1959 with me strangling “dick” hickcock in bed night after lovely night… as i got to play dorothy of course clicking my ruby slippers looking at myself in the mirror with that constant amazed look of stunned shame knowing she’s not in kansas anymore honey but rather overcome by her hardly bashful queenly amazement at myself now when sullen handsome “dick” hickcock comes to murder me in my dreams at night with his lopsided handsome face and sullen knowing smirk that just wouldn’t quit honey all the way until they hung him that awful dark night on the gallows & the rope jerked his neck so hard with that one last awful long squirt one last time nodding so knowingly when madame capote said this or miss capote said that or when miss capote opined about dick’s fictitious knighthood for faggy perry smith and their crummy escapist adventures in mexico on the run—all of which i took very seriously as if i were embedded in some real true crime cold-blooded mysterious tableaux vivant with two lovely male whore witches of the east and west playing along with the charming wizard of oz miss capote the game first in black and white then technicolor in all its decadent hollywood babylon remakes but especially back then sitting in the living room there in that innocent little cow-paddy plopped town of emporia kansas there on nostalgic elm-shaded constitution street where the conniving convict killers bought the rope and tape for the forthcoming true crime melodrama smirking it up at old-fashioned hayne’s hardware store while later there i was sipping some ice tea with a few of the small town intelligentsia queen bees who were still there and hadn’t made their great escape to topeka or wichita or kansas city or the west coast or east coast yet all of us who loved to schmooze with miss capote’s whiney faggoty voice pretending to cultivate kansas chic couture during our bridge game soirees and decadent discussions pretending to be wilting delicate orchids there in the twilight of that hidden secret maudlin midwestern noir ambience we were so used to enduring but knew somehow was slowly disappearing along with our disguised small town closetry and snooty secrecy since now thanks to miss capote kansas was out of the closet and in the open my dear shockingly revealed by miss capote’s trashy new yorker story quite openly and intellectually hoity-toity pretending that murder once so foul was now stylishly in literary fashion worthy of a masked ball of the nyc rich and famous so that tacky miss capote could preen and purr to herself like the cat’s meow knowing that it was time for all of us poor queens back in kansas to wise up, that we had better listen up and learn how to laugh properly my dears at the shrewd new yorker cosmopolitan cartoons and stylishly sophisticated outré covers while there was still time in that little town of ours still in the middle ages rather than being just another scene in a crime soap opera that had furnished the killers with their nefarious tape and homicidal rope with the gloomy grim gothic presbyterian church grimacing across the stark street so appropriately named commercial street with its mouldering old movie palace the granada that in 1967 would portray the horrible clutter slaughter out there in remote depressing holcomb kansas far to the west so very weird & full of déjà vu tall plains grain elevator horror years later seeing it up there on the screen that same way each time replaying it all over again and again reminding us of that eerie déjà vu flashback thing that miss capote had back then while reading that little inconspicuous nytimes tidbit about some kansas minor murder event back there in the sticks since after all murder my dears there in the infamous rotten-to-the-core big apple was certainly nothing new and that’s exactly what miss capote immediately grasped which was the idea for a nytimes best seller eye-opening true crime nonfiction novel that she knew would simply be a huge shudderingly chic shocker to all the denizens back in kansas where all those innocents back there in that naïve isolated faraway primitive fly over state region must have suddenly awoken from their corny-as-kansas zombie dream-state wondering what the fuck had happened to their idyllic somnambulant blissful midwestern reveries—and then before you know it miss capote is right there on the next speeding santa fe super chief with harper lee accompanying him as his trusty childhood fag-hag interpreter to help him ease his way into the trusting naïve living rooms and café small-talk gossiping ambience of that stunned little shocked innocent holcomb kansas community savoring each exquisite voyeurisme moment taking delicious notes for later on writing late at night in that tacky dingy garden city motel room where miss capote began composing his ultimate faggy revenge against the very same small town nightmare of his own southern tortured upbringing cast off by his mommy dearest and errant useless father only to be adopted by aunts and other relatives growing up strange as harper lee describes in to kill a mockingbird with the central idea that perry smith was like his twin doppelganger lost brother who had gone out the back door while Truman had gone out the front door and who just as well could’ve ended up like perry as a cold-blooded murderer and who now instead for some strange reason found himself in holcomb kansas reenacting that same primal scene of childhood rejection, boyhood orphanages and rough trade prison time that made him bond with this Other brother who would hang by the neck until dead rather than him—with me gossiping later on with my queen-bee sisters in emporia about the whole sordid affair like the closeted mister mosher the astute small town historian down in the basement of the civic auditorium along with the butchy lesbian miss reeble who ran the tombstone memorial business down across the tracks as well as with mrs. haynes who lived across the street from me the wife of the owner of haynes’ hardware there in emporia where the two clutter murderers bought their way to the lansing gallows and made their fame and fortune in lovely holcomb that night and later with miss capote’s in cold blood in the new yorker then as a novel and then all the movie reruns from then on with the story retold every twenty-five years or so with each generation of readers and movie viewers doing the usual de reguer updating not-so-naïve reinterpretation game of that unfathomable homicidal night but not just that because it was by then as time went by more of a performance art reenacting what we all knew and lived through as moody midwesterners back then, growing up in the hithertofore unspeakable kansas american gothic aesthetic captured somewhat elegantly earlier by edward hopper and grant wood but now recreated and updated with garish cosmopolitan stylish new yorker mock-horror chic verging on snide highly sophisticated satire that one expects of decadent east coast cynicism encapsulated by that scene within a scene as the killers drove up dumpy commercial street there in that sleepy little college town of emporia kansas past the strand and then past the granada itself where later on the movie in cold blood would stand out there on the bleak blinking marquee capturing the scene as they drive by the granada the same way these two tragic doppelganger lovers and prison boyfriends way back then drove up the street back then when the dying laidback eisenhower fifties mise-en-scene with its quaint hwy 50 and fading santa fe railroad ambience was slowly painfully beginning to fade away and enter our more cynical murder-moderné age of truly horrifying awareness that in cold blood was no longer just a novel or movie but even more so the way things really were now as the apocalyptic last days of 2012 slowly became the drive-by killer story of what our lives had really finally become……

Capote's Kansas

Capote’s Kansas

“A region is not a thing so much

as a cultural history, an ongoing

rhetorical and poetic construction”

—Douglass Reichert Powell,

Critical Regionalism: Connecting

Politics and Culture in the

American Landscape, 2007

Rather than rhetoric—

I use this abbreviated haiku

Form of poetic construction

I have yet to find any—

Capote-esque poetry version

Of the film or novel

What form would such—

A poetic construction take

To match non-fictionality?

That stark, stoic region—

That lonely American gothic

Moment on the High Plains?

Mary White

Madwoman in the Attic

—for Mary White

After the riding accident—

They stuffed me up in the attic

To shut my big fat Mouth

I was getting much too Uppity—

There at Emporia High School

Such a dull place to go to school

I told too many Feminist stories—

I even wanted to let the poor little

Negro girls to use the women’s john

Maybe once or twice was okay—

But soon Daddy Dearest thought

It was best to adroitly shut me up

A tragic riding accident would be—

The best way to handle me & my

How his Obituary got rave reviews!

As far as Big Daddy was concerned—

He wasn’t going to let his burgeoning

Plutocratic Journalist career be ruined

Certainly not by an Uppity Daughter—

With naïve Pretensions of Declaring

Equality of the Sexes & the Coloreds!!!

Mouldering in the Attic

“Mouldering in the Attic”—

Stuffed up there by Daddy Dearest

And snotty closet-case Lindsay

That’s where I was, honey—

Up there in the Red Rocks attic

Slowly mouldering my life away

John Brown was my all-time hero—

So undaunted, true and brave

Struggling for all the Emporia Slaves

All the brave Women out there—

Not the old G. A. R. haughty sluts

And D. A. R. hoity-toity drag queens

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah, girl!!!”—

I was just a little ahead of my times

They turned me into a Closet Case

Anyway, the dreary years dragged on—

They kept me hidden upstairs pretending

I was just a poor Madwoman in the Attic

When actually they kept me loaded—

Totally higher than a kite making me

Puff a hookah & become an Opium Addict

Mary White

Mary White—Mad Woman in the Attic

My name is Mary White...

I was born in 1904, a harsh time

Of change in Emporia, Kansas

Money and position seemed—

All that mattered & Charity was just

A cold and disagreeable word

Religion too often wore a mask—

Of bigotry and cruelty, an excuse

For sanctimonious One-Upsmanship

There was no proper place—

For the poor or the unfortunate

Especially the Blacks & Chicanos

My father was the esteemed—

Editor of The Emporia Gazette who

Was a known Hobnobber of Plutocrats

Presidents came and went there—

At Red Rocks our mansion there on

Lovely elm-shaded Exchange Street

I detested my faggy brother Lindsay—

And I hated living in Emporia so full of

Red State Republican Sanctimoniousness

Mary White

My Brother Lindsay

—for William Lindsay White

The nastiness of older brothers—

Poor limp-wristed William Lindsay

Who never wanted to be Editor

He preferred martinis and—

Bridge parties back in New York

Where he could be a Queen Bee

He tried to continue The Gazette—

But his nelly voice didn’t go very

Well at the Lyon County Rodeo

I heard him addressing the rather—

Raunchy crowd of cowboys and

Butchy ranch-hands one time

It was so embarrassing, my dears—

To hear Lindsay’s nasal effeminate

Whining Voice drift over the audience

He tried to sound unpretentious—

But just couldn’t seem to help himself

Even the Rodeo Clowns smirked at him