I watched Chuck coach Lena into Heaven
Jim Bodeen
18 August 2026
POST TO MY NEIGHBOR REGARDING THE TI LEAF LEI
POST TO MY NEIGHBOR REGARDING THE TI LEAF LEI
--for Nicole
--I thought everybody had read
The Breakdown of the Bicameral Brain
Nicole Papagiorgio
After refrigerating the leis, taking notes
on your visit, I wrapped them around
the Iwakura Stone in the garden, called
my brother, the coach, who has Polynesian
instincts, and gave him one. Research
turned into prayer: survival food in canoes.
Merton spoke to me calling trees
the perfect image of God. There’s Mark.
I wrote the story of the Ti Leaf
on the inside panel of a street sign asking
that it protect witnesses from harm.
I wrapped the lei around the 4-panel sign.
I photographed the lei, carrying it back
to the Iwakura stone and wrapped it
around this Suiseki Stone I discovered
in the Spokane River. Stay with me,
Nicole. Today I sliced off the lei
end beginning a palimpsest
on the street sign. This lei
does honest work. On this post card
as well, thinking of other deep listeners
like you, wishing you well.
Jim
16 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
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