Taking wire
from neglected bonsai
what fills the hunger
Jim Bodeen
24 August 2026
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE SAID ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY : 9 AUGUST 1945
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE SAID ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY
9 August 1945
My mother said I was born on the day the war ended.
The newspaper said I was born on the day
we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
Margaret Mead said no elders anywhere
know what we know now.
Jim Bodeen
9 August 2026
PEACE POSTERS FOR UKRAINE
PEACE POSTERS FOR UKRAINE
Call these new posters, The Part for the Whole.
Cardboard for this one came from medicine
on ice. Breaking it down and open,
following where it led, folding
four sides into two, a front and back,
I had my sides. Cardboard brown out
street-side. I like 2-sided signs.
I choose two Ukrainian women poets.
We Don’t have the right kind
of basement for our building,
from Anastasia Afanasieva.
From Halyna Kruk, And none
of us knew where the war zone
actually was, the scope of losses.
Part for the whole.
Hand-written, colored sharpies.
Blue and yellow markers.
From a new book of peace poems.
For the street. Coming and going.
I still hadn’t discovered the other side.
The inside. The inside would open
to four sides. The inside
contains the whole world.
Jim Bodeen
28 July 2026
HOW A NEW PIECE OF ART ENTERS THE WORLD
HOW A NEW PIECE OF ART ENTERS THE WORLD
for Marty Lovins
The assemblage gift for my birthday, Marty,
begins today with this postcard. A snapshot
taken with a smartphone. Karen uploading
it to go in the mail. Two veterans changed
by the bomb, each with footprints in Japan.
Stopping time. Nagasaki. 9 August 1945.
Your art circles our house. Medicine
salvaged from cigar boxes, broken
pocket watches. Shields made
from sticks, onion skin covering
balsa wood. Every day another
Hibakusha dies the next bomb
becomes more visible. We pause
entering the kitchen, recognized
by those unknown to Curtis LeMay.
We learned everything we know
from those gardens in Kyoto.
Our commissions come,
in part, from what we carried home.
Love, and grace, and thanks.
Jim
30 July 2026
LOOKING AT AN ASSEMBLAGE BY MARTY LOVINS / CREATED AND GIVEN FOR MY 81ST BIRTHDAY / 9 AUGUST 1945
LOOKING AT AN ASSEMBLAGE BY MARTY LOVINS
CREATED AND GIVEN FOR MY 81ST BIRTHDAY, 9 AUGUST 1945
Time stops the moment this bomb hits this clock.
The clock wobbles too. The circle dangling
below the clock is part of the clock. Nagasaki time.
Born in the instant, I am. We are.
Conditioned already. There is a mirror
in the lower right of the assemblage.
Karen and I are watching TV, at dusk.
I look over at the wall where it hangs,
in dusk light. Wait, Karen. Stop.
The TV. I walk over to the piece,
Untitled by the jeweler, Marty Loins,
and take a picture with my smart phone.
That’s me in the mirror. Self-portrait
at the moment of my birth, 9 August 1945.
In the after-time, the after-birth,
the morning time, sunlight hits the circle
more directly, casting three shadows
on the wall. Air movement, people
walking by, into the kitchen, or,
on their way to the bathroom, cause
the circle to move, slightly. You
may not notice. Another thing.
The synesthesia. There is music in this piece.
You’re a musician, maybe. Something like music
right here. Only my jeweler knows. He, too, is a musician.
A part for the whole. Synecdoche.
Oh! That’s the Taj Mahal
in the one photo, and a class of graduating
students from Yakima, in the other.
There’s more, yes. The dizziness.
Jim Bodeen
12 July—30 July 2026
DRAFTING LINES FOR SIGNS OF THE TIMES BEFORE JUNETEENTH IN YAKIMA, 2026
DRAFTING LINES FOR SIGNS OF THE TIMES
BEFORE JUNETEENTH IN YAKIMA, 2026
Transforming despair into poster art.
Into signs. Getting our people safe
to the other side. Keep your form.
James Baldwin and Eddie Glaude, Jr.,
shiver at the cheapening. Celebration
what. Cheap grace. Together, these two
prepare me for Juneteenth,
Rise Up and Sing.
No king is coming for you, America
These are the Juneteenth James Baldwin Blues
He’s beginning again, and so am I.
The Anthology of Signs begins with your name.
Hold on, now. You gotta hold on.
Hold on if you can.
What does your sign say?
You know people driving by
can’t read a word
your sign says, she says.
What she says.
The Back women justices
on the Supreme Court
don’t suffocate because they’re not
breathing alone--
Lean into the fiction.
Freedom on a sucker stick
taped to the rear window of my Fit
Nobody knows Juneteenth.
Listen up kids.
Mom and Dad didn’t know it either.
Baldwin calls it the Aftertimes.
Don’t feel bad. It’s not easy
to wrap your mind around this one.
So here’s the first Juneteenth.
Galveston, Texas. 1866.
I know, I know. Hang on.
Yes, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863. Before the war was over.
The Civil War ended April 9, 1865.
On Grandma Cele’s birthday?
On Grandma Cele’s birthday.
Look. Nobody can understand this.
Supreme Court Jusice John Roberts,
Right now. Head of the Supreme Court Justice Himself
can’t understand it. He thinks history’s a straight line!
I’m not dumbing anybody down.
I am talking to a whole bunch of people at once.
Justice John Roberts is one.
Jim Bodeen
13 June-3 August 2026
JAMES BALDWIN JUNETEENTH POSTER ART BLUES
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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