JAMES BALDWIN JUNETEENTH POSTER ART BLUES
Commingling days contribute
to the Anthology of Signs,
double-sided, pressing against
each other through cardboard,
my pocketful of colored sharpies
learning from the kids with paint cans.
The fallen crown discarded: No king
is coming for you, America--
this is the necessary shock
before the jail break. Birds
are singing it’s a busy time.
Kings leave behind despair,
and James Baldwin has come home
to begin again. “Everyone was paying
their dues and it was time.” My friend
sends me Martín Espada’s poems
as he traces his father’s camera
“searching for the faces of the people
he would call our people.” These
are the after times, and when
I finished my sign on the porch
I met the NAACP group in the church
parking lot and we caravanned
through Yakima. Not too many
of us this year. Transforming
sorrow into poster art. Shivering
and huddled, Eddie Glaude, Jr.
hunkers down with Reverend
Trumble who asks what time
service is tomorrow. We’re shivering
before the fact and fear of cheap grace
of birthdays. Even our people
don’t know the black poets.
Glaude calls this the weaponization
of jubilee. Jusice Harlan’s lone
dissenting vote—score it 8 to 1,
made separate but equal
the law of the land, didn’t they,
Justice John G. Roberts.
This blues-soaked hope.
Raw song singing for discarded
crowns. Who would want laurels
with all this available? Baldwin says,
I’m beginning again—and so am I.
Signed on the poster. The path
is right. Ir’s a good path.
And true. No King coming.
Discard’s as easy as gin rummy.
We do this one by ourselves.
Jim Bodeen
13 June 2026
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