by Jim RueI sat naked on the bank of the frigid Missouri River.
I peeked down from my tenth floor hotel window on Kansas City.
I went to bed there and dreamed I explored
this town where my parents were married in 1930
No Missouri plaque marks my first glimmer of legitimacy.
But Bonnie and Clyde did the town once.
Ma Barker and Alvin Karpis stayed in this very place.
Jesse James has streets named after him
But no entree is named after my mother at the Savoy Hotel.
No musical style is attributed to my father in suburban Shawnee Mission.
Bob Dole never knew my father. Jamie Farr has never heard my name.Still, those incendiary two, Arthur and Opal Rue
Left a light deep in the eyes of their progeny.
Anguished depression refugees begat
Anguished language people like me.
Mom couldn't help telling her story.
Over Scrabble, with pizza, during the movie, any time.
She cried but never knew how.
She took things, but never knew what.
My father, Ozark coal-miner's son, was a hulking, deaf orphan of the Brethren.Sin hung from him like Spanish moss.
Was it diphtheria, or the yard bosses' truncheon that killed his hearing?
His ears committed suicide.
His ears refused to hear his children whine, his wife harp.
Tempest fugits, he would advise.
It sure does. One of four siblings down.
Two more pounding their foreheads now, demanding health.
One limping forward alone, fist in the sky,
Dreaming weakly of five acres and independence
Just as he did.In my Kansas City dreams my toy doorstop survived the decades.
It was a two by twelve wooden drive-in theater
It featured a Saturday matinee idol drawn by me
In pencil. The cowboy with his horse
Was special. Even his horse knew what.
I never knew what, and still don’t
And he listened.
His eyes glistened like nailheads.
He talked through his teeth.
He smoked through his teeth.
He spoke, quiet, without moving his lips.
He took the bags of gold and it was "Now, Vamoose!"
He spoke bastard Spanish and brandished a pistola.
J. Edgar Hoover hated his guts.
Kansas was in his cold smile.
© 1997 Jim Rue