YADDO 

Guilt—
always having been
my Gulag Archipelago

But it wasn’t—
until Yaddo that
I really knew
_________________

Across the hallway—
Chester Himes had
drinks with me

We talked—
and talked & talked
long into the night
___________________

I was horrified—
by his Chicago
rat stories

But even more—
by his feeling guilty
for his black skin
______________

Is that why—
I exiled myself
to Switzerland?

I could be—
white as snow
not feeling guilty?

Bijou Bildungsroman

BIJOU BILDUNGSROMAN

Kansas as a bad movie—
a failed Filmography of dreams
the story of my so-called life

There in the cool Granada—
air-conditioned in the summers
saved by Hollywood fantasies
____________

Then standing afterwards—
under the bright marquee
there on Commercial Street

Dazed even delirious—
still lost in some filmic dream
like IMITATION OF LIFE
____________

Saturday matinee thrillers—
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK 
LAGOON & WAR OF THE WORLDS 

While the grim, grimacing old—
Presbyterian Church across the
street looked down and frowned 
_____________

Predicting a doomed boyhood—
of too much excessive fantasy
and literary trouble-making

After all my dears, surely it was—
Hollywood and the Granada that
turned me into a decadent Fag!!!

Kansas in Cinemascope

KANSAS IN CINEMASCOPE

IN COLD BLOOD and—
MURDER ORDAINED were
bad enough I suppose

Up there on the silver—
screen of the ancient
film palace GRANADA
____________

HOW THE WEST WAS WON—
cheesy angelic choruses plus
Spencer Tracy’s booming voice

Things ending up more like—
a nightmare version of
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK
_________

Such a lovely little town—
full of Midwestern Noir
and grim resignation 

Stoic desperation—
ending up quietly
in sad obituaries

Box Office Treats

BOX OFFICE TREATS

“to brief a treat”
—Truman Capote to
Robert Linscott 5/6/1949
SELECTED LETTERS
___________

My boyfriends back then—
were much too much
too brief a treat

Those lovely Granada—
balcony quickies in the
dark down on my knees
__________

Anything, my dears—
was better than that
awful Midwestern noir

Even tacky, butchy—
Charlton Heston all
sweaty in BEN HUR
__________________

Altho I preferred—
sleazy Lana Turner in
IMITATION OF LIFE

Claiming her daughter—
knifed handsome gangster 
hung Johnny Stompanato 

Granada Alcove

GRANADA ALCOVE

“This is the last time
I am ever going to
write “a reportage.”
—Truman Capote
to Richard Avedon
Sept 22, 1960
________________

Kansas was simply—
depressing enough without
doing a movie about it

Writing a novel—
was bad enough all
those dreary nights
___________

There in Garden City—
at the No Tell Motel with
those traveling salesmen

Harper Lee simply—
abandoning me there
without a fag hag guide
___________

Like Blanche DuBois—
I had to depend on the
kindness of strangers

But all those paranoid—
Holcomb farmboys
didn’t like me, honey

Neosho/Cottonwood River Anthology

NEOSHO/COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY

"The cemetery was my playground"
—Cheryl Unruh, "Remembering the Dead," Fly Over People, Emporia Gazette
_____________

Short, brief, epigrammatic—
reminding me of Edgar Lee Master’s 
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

Visiting my mother Amy’s grave—
grandparents Larkin’s graves there in
Memorial Lawn/Maplewood Cemetery
__________________

Those same nostalgic, lonesome—
heartache feelings for those we once 
knew so well and loved so much

Emporia has grown way out past—
the cemetery and the flagpole where 
Memorial Day was once recognized 
______________

By the VFW, GAR & DAR when I was a kid—
he Civil War dead not far away, but gone now
like the old Emporia County Courthouse 

The streets of Emporia lined with—
Chase County quarry limestone, sidewalks, 
bridges, church foundations, businesses
_______________

The little Athens of the Midwest college town—
slowly but surely becoming a ghost town like 
so many other small Kansas towns

Perhaps someday some writer like—
Masters will write about all of us in his own version 
NEOSHO/COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY? 

Piano in a Wheatfield

Flint Hills Side Road

Cheryl Unruh FlyoverPeople.net

PIANO IN A WHEATFIELD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k 

“Returning home is like that.
The future gets left behind, 
a piano dumped on a stark
prairie.”—Robert Rebein
Dragging Wyatt Earp: A 
Personal History of Dodge City
________________

It’s out there somewhere—
lost a huge gold wheatfield

With the Chevy pickup—
it’s all gone, ruins in the wind
___________________

The windmill, the big red barn—
the farmhouse and grainery

All you can hear is the—
piano strings whispering