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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