REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE'S BEND

 REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE’S BEND

                          

      “Strike the rock and water will come out of it.”

                                                      Exodus 17: 6

Moses would love the quilts from Gee’s Bend.

The commemorative stamps would would startle and silence,

he might drop the stone. He’d look at the meteor shower

in Harriet Power’s quilt, and call it scripture.

Two surviving quilts proclaiming,

Nothing is missing, calling for a third

tablet of stone. He’d wonder what else he missed

lost in God’s clouds. Gee’s Bend, The Pettway Plantation.

A husband’s work clothes cut out and sewn

for God’s glory. Go down, Moses. Strike

the rock and water will come. All right,

Moses, and that water came. Grant you that.

But Egypt, now. Tears in the water.

Quilts for God come from God.

And that Middle Passage, Moses.

Call that Middle Passage what it is.

Quilts from Gee’s Bend testify, but

call Egypt by its real name.

Jim Bodeen

9 March 2026

FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK

 

FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK

An art teacher, Jennie Smith, saw Harriet Powers' quilt at a cotton fair, and sought her out. Ms. Powers then, described each block to Smith, and because of that, we have Harriet Powers' words available to us today. This story documents how her grave site was rediscovered, and a new headstone dedicated. Harriet Powers's quilts are "documents in fabric." If you follow to her portrait, notice how she's dressed. She is "dressed up." And her clothes are also documents. That apron--look at it It's a uniform and a story. For instance, ask an indigenous woman about her apron, a Mexican woman about her "delantal." Its power and place. Look at the thread and imagery of the apron Harriet Powers wears. And in this image, below: Look at the falling stars recorded in cloth from 19 May 1780.

Harriet Powers lives now on the U. S. Commemorative Postal Stamp issued 28 February 2026, the last day of African American History month. Two of her quilts survive and can be seen in museums. Her story no longer confines itself to her quilts. I, too, survive as a fabric block of sorts. It is the first weekof March and my country has entered a new war, and the white chalk of days continues. On Thursdays I stand with others on a street corner for 30-minutes with my cardboard sign, shaped by taking apart a card box box. I have taken lines from Ukrainian poets and written them on the cardboard with different colored marking pens. I find the making of the signs a meditation, as well as a form of petitionary prayer.

My wife, Karen, is a quilter and fabric artist. She’s sewing today with others. I helped load her car with her sewing machine and materials. I put her fold-up wagon in the trunk to carry her machine. She’s working with little houses cut out on fabric. Each house is on a quilting square, or block, they call them. I made her a honey and peanut butter sandwich with some grapes for her lunch, and she sat down with me to eat her yogurt before leaving to quilt. She brought in two squares for me to look at. The houses have two windows, or two doors, they could be either, couldn’t they? I ask her. Yes, I guess they could. I intended them as windows, though. Flowers accompany either of them, be they doors or windows. They’re so colorful. They could be curtains, too! Yes. They could be.

She drove off a few minutes ago. She’ll be gone most of the day, cutting out little houses on fabric, creating a neighborhood of fabric houses blocked out on cotton. I can only see so far, and can’t imagine what else will happen during this day of documentation, Of creation. I have a couple of hours myself to do with as I like. I began a new notebook this morning before walking, so I have that set up before me, and I hope to write a couple of post card poems, attaching different panels from Harriet Powers’ quilt newly created in the form of stamps. I will take them to the Post Office, where the postal clerk will provide me with a hand cancellation across the stamp in red ink. I find this last step wonderful. It makes me a bit dizzy. All of this, to tell the truth, makes me dizzy—more than dizzy.

Jim Bodeen

6 March 2026

ALI

 

ALI

Three years older

Ali was the poem we

thought impossible

Jim Bodeen

6 Februaary 2026

LETTER TO PHILLIS WHEATLEY WRITTEN WHILE LOOKING AT HER PORTRAIT ON THE BLACK HERITAGE POSTAGE STAMP ISSUED 29 JANUARY 2026

 

LETTER TO PHILLIS WHEATLEY WRITTEN

WHILE LOOKING AT HER PORTRAIT ON THE BLACK HERITAGE

POSTAGE STAMP ISSUED 29 JANUARY 2026

            ...blooming graces, triumph in my song.

            ...a faithful tongue…

            ...imagination is the empyreal palace of a trustin God

            ...Now here, Now there, the roving Fancy flies,

            till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes,

            Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,

            And soft captivity involves the mind.

            Imagination, who can sing thy force?

            …each noble path pursue… Phillis Wheatley

Jupiter Hammon’s letter addresses you

as elder, poet, peer, Christian, and slave,

both of you freed, and today we might add

immigrant—that, like everything between us

seems stretched. Hammon, born in 1711,

was 62 when your book,

Poems on Various Subjects

Religious and Moral, is published, 1773--

Phillis, you’re 20 years old. Both of you

wrote poems. You crossed at 31,

Hammon dies at 95. Starting with his letter,

he calls you pious youth in the first

stanza; and in the second one, he says

you might have been left behind.

You were 8 when you arrived

on the slave ship Phillis

receiving your new name.

Black writers, black women who insist

in living in ink, your fellow poet June Jordan

writes, have been writing about you

            Still, may the painter’s and the poet’s fire,

            to aid thy pencil and thy verse conspire?

            There in one view we grasp the mighty whole...

            ...twice six gates on radiant hinges ring

            celestial blooms in endless spring

            And may the muse inspire each future song!

            ...these shades of time are chased away…

            For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,

            And purer language…

for 250 years. You open 250 Years

of Struggle and Song, Kevin Young’s

Library of Congress monument to

African American Poetry, while

Jupiter Hammon’s letter to you

follows your poems. You, then and now,

are the Mother of African American

literature and I address you as such.

Hammon knows your poems

when he writes, ...adore

the wisdom of your God.

Adore, because you might

have been left behind. He believes

America is a good place to be,

making Christianity possible. In Stanza 4

he says it stronger: God’s tender mercy

            Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind…

            How he has wrestled with his God by night

            To shield your poet from the burning day:

            Calliope, awake the sacred lyre,

            While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire.

            And through the air their mingled music floats.        

            Spirits dart through flowing veins

            ...Fancy dresses to delight the Muse…

            ...frozen deeps may break iron bands...

brought you here, and it’s worth

all the gold in Spain. Hammon

is a bit overbearing—I’m an old man

at 80, and know that voice, he may be

jealous, too, he wrote sermons

all his life, he urges, Dear Phillis,

seek heaven’s joys. Neither of you

can see the mess we’re in now.

Michael Harper’s anthology’s here, too.

African American Poetry, 200 Years

of Vision, struggle, Power, Beauty and Triumph--

you and Jupiter Hammon, presented

at the beginning, and Harper gives us

your other visions: To the painter,

to the Morning, and Evening, and death,

on leaving for England.

You’re at the beginning of it all.

I’m looking at your stamp.

Black and white, ink on paper.

25 Million postage stamps of you.

I write as one who has been lifted,

if not saved, by black poets. I sit,

struck by your poems traveling

through time. There’s paper, and

Phillis, you’re holding a pencil,

where you’ve written,

Preface to my Second Volume.

Jupiter Hammon’s here too.

Following always, Jim

P. S. We’re here in the living room, together.

All of us. Here, in the all of it.

Jim Bodeen

29 January 2026

Phillis, we’re here in the living room, together.

All of us. We’re here, in the all of it.

Jim Bodeen

29 January 2026

ON THIS THIRD DAY OF FEBRUARY, 2026, JAMES BALDWIN, HIS STAMP AND OUR TIME

 

ON THIS THIRD DAY OF FEBRUARY, 2026,

JAMES BALDWIN, HIS STAMP AND OUR TIME

Opening the drawer on the coffee table

where commemorative stamps are kept—ones

I can use, that I hold out for me—not

the ones in sleeves archived for grandchildren,

looking for the James Baldwin 37-cent

commemorative I attach to post card

poems as gifts for friends, this Baldwin

stamp came out on 23 July 2004,

before Forever stamps debuted

in April 2007 (eliminating the need

to purchase stamps in small denominations

to mail a letter), the first Forever

being Liberty Bell, I’m re-reading Baldwin

during Black History month. Listen to him

on Martin Luther King, Jr. “...to state

it baldly, ‘I liked him. It is rare that one

likes a world-famous man—by the time

they become famous they rarely like themselves.’”

This drawer of loose stamps is a treasure

chest of Black history: Ernest Gaines,

August Wilson, Edmonia Lewis, Harriet Tubman,

Tousssaint, Gwen Ifill, Ella—Waters and Fitzgerald--

Arturo Schomburg—Oh, man! Baldwin

wrote this in 1961, “King cannot

be considered chauvinist, what he says

to Negroes he will say to whites, and what he says

to whites he will say to Negroes.” Baldwin

is five years older than King. Until King,

in Montgomery, Baldwin writes, the minister

could not change the lives of hearers: “All

they came to find, and all that he could give

was sustenance for another day’s journey.”

Baldwin again, bluntly, “...the white manuscript

on whom the American Negro modeled himself,

is vanishing. This white man was, himself,

a mythical creation of men who have never been

what they imagined themselves to be.” We’re

not done here, are we? The Baldwin stamp

matches a portrait of him, circa-1960

against a backdrop view of Harlem

where he grew up. So much story

in a square-inch stamp. One more Baldwin

gem: “Europeans refer to Americans

as children in the same way American Negroes

refer to Americans as children...so little experience...

no key to the experience of others.” To

become oneself. These stamps help me

in my studies. To stamps in these times, saving

for grandchildren Grandpa’s stand: February, 2026.

This 37-cent postage stamp, added to an envelope

requiring 71 cents postage, pure and extra,

political, with hand-cancellation, through the mail.

Jim Bodeen

3 February 2026

FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE, JANUARY, 2026, YAKIMA, WASHINGTON--TO THE WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL, 31 MARCH 1968--LETTER TO PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

 

FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE, JANUARY, 2026

YAKIMA, WASHINGTON—TO THE WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL,

31 MARCH 1968—LETTER TO PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

             PART II

I. After the Sermon

You’re greeting the congregation, Dr. King,

taking our hands as we file out,

and we’re slow go not letting go of your hand.

This is your last public sermon

and this time we get it.

You’ve just stepped down

from the Canterbury Pulpit

Cathedral Church of St. Peter & St. Paul,

commonly known as Washington Cathedral.

March 31, 1968.

           ●

15 March 2026

II. Dear Pastor King,

I’m going to call you pastor, Dr. King.

That’s what you are for me, Pastor King, my pastor,

and I’m coming from the pew. I, know, too,

your titles, and the epithets that come with you,

and I’m still inflated by it all, from the Canterbury Pulpit

to your place at the right hand of God.

We’re getting ready for your birthday.

I’m walking before breakfast listening with hearing aids.

I’m 80, and no longer need to embellish. You’re telling us

about Rip Van Winkel, how he slept for 20 years,

sleeping right through a revolution.

King George III. We have other worries now--

Yakima, Central Washington State, it’s cold, and the ink won’t run

in my pen. I take notes on the recipe card while walking. For the Pecan Pie

I made for your birthday.

On this day, end of March, 1968,

I’m 22 years old, 85^th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon, Viet Nam

during the Battle of Tet begun on New Year’s lasting until

Johnson finally stopped the bombing. I’ll pick up there.

It’s my job to get our guys off choppers and onto planes

and out of the country to Japan, Philippines, or, closer to you

in D.C. at Walter Reed—Ft. Sam Houston for burned bodies.

I can relate to what you say about just to have crumbs,

about the appalling silence and indifference of good people.

I didn’t hear it then. I did, but. It wasn’t exactly chronological.

I had a teacher in high school, 1963, who told us, broke your story--

but I didn’t know, then, you wrote that Letter from Birmingham Jail,

then, 16 April 1963. No, I didn’t. Then, that, that I didn’t know.

When I did know, later, I put your Letter from Birmingham

into my New Testament. It’s right there next to Paul’s letters.

But in March 1968, I’m at the 85^th Evac, a GI.

And I’m bunkered with medics and we’re black and white,

and we’re brothers, as you say from The Canterbury Pulpit,

...standing in brutal solidarity...young black men

and young white men, fighting and killing

in brutal soldarity, that is us.

And in a few days,

when you are murdered,

that’s where we are, and that’s where I am.

And when you are killed, GI’s in Vietnam,

we’re all wondering what just happened. You say,

Dante couldn’t imagine it. We’re using other words,

talking in GI. And writing home. Writing home.

Brothers in Black and White. And that’s how

I remember those days—and Bobby Kennedy’s

still alive. No confusion there. “They send us

to Vietnam, and when we’re done here, they’re

going to send us back to the United States.”

What I won’t know for years,

Dr. King—I do slip in and out of those titles,

is that this is what’s in my letters. We’re together

in that hospital, one in bunkered solidarity, telling

this cruel joke on ourselves. “That’s what’s going

to happen.” It’s in my letters to Karen. When I found

those letters she saved, I felt redeemed. You say

in that last sermon...and when they come home

they can’t hardly live on the same block together.

Being part of the cruel joke is part of our blessing.

Dr. King, what I want to tell you

in this letter is this. We’re in the same pew.

We’re in the same block, too. Always have been.

It hasn’t been like this for everybody,

but that’s how it is here, with me, with us.

III. HOLDING ON TO PASTOR MARTIN’S HAND

I’ve been holding onto this one over 50 years, Pastor Martin.

I’m conscious of the man beside me, I am,

but this time, not my time, but we’ve been in line

a long time. I’m talking to you in a letter

and I’ve got grand-kids, grown now,

and I’m talking to them through you,

in your words, through that pulpit over time,

and then there’s my notes from what you

said on that toilet paper from Birmingham Jail.

I’m just coming to that,

They can hear that direct from me.

Dr. King.

Yes. That sermon.

That’s life.

Life in that sermon

that’s not going away never.

Jim Bodeen

15 January 2026

KATE AT 20

 

KATE AT 20

Sometime in December I began

thinking about your birthday like this,

Damn, Kate’s gonna be 20,

and here we are. Yesterday

a book of poems came

in the mail. Second

Childhood. I ordered

it for myself. Marie

Howe says she’s decided

not to grow up. I’m following

in her footsteps, Kate.

You’re the first one

I’ve told. Grandma

sewed you a cover

for a new sketch book.

You’re an artist

with an eye for eyes

who thinks in geological

time. Called

to all this! You!

What kind of child

would I be

if I tried to give you

advice on your birthday.

Gpa

21 January 2026