AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT, NAVY PIER CHICAGO

THE MOTORCYCLE WITH THE RED FENDER

AND BLACK SADDLE BAGS MADE OF FLANNEL

            Before the AIDS Quilt at Navy Pier, Chicago

They photographed quilts they had brought

to share. They had laid them out on the floor

in the living room. And in the Indiana Museum,

they had done the same. The Vine Quilt             

with its colorful patchwork leaves.

And the Rainbow Quilt hung

in the modern art gallery.

Marie Webster's linen and cotton appliquéd

on cotton from 1920. The quilter

who wrote the first history of quilting.

Then the sky fell. Quilting would no longer

be on your grandmother's bed.

Donna Stader laid a blue cotton slash

across the top and it became the falling sky.

Family history would never be the same.

Silent with each other with time,

they walked the Pier in Chicago

without purpose, finding themselves

face to face with the AIDS quilt

on Pride Day in all of America's

major cities. The wall-sized

block of Sotomayor, Front page

AIDS numbers unfound

by grandma and grandpa

in the newspaper, Squares

of the fallen beneath the cartoon.

Never again. Daniel 1958-1992.

Act up Chicago. Cure the System,

Fight for the living, bordering

the waterfront: We're all living with AIDS.

And the young woman appearing

before in shiny satin rainbow cape,

on this side of the rail,

before the basketball jersey

of Stephen J. Gibson.

She turns towards me,

for the camera, in her rainbow tshirt,

smiling, holding up the cape,

fresh from the parade.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt photos by Lisa Howe-Ebright

from the 1988 installation intersperse themselves

between quilt blocks. We see the first quilt blocks

on the pier floor, with the first viewers

walking in witness.

My friends post images of the Parade

from San Francisco, and Seattle.

Happy Pride Day. Facebook.

Worth sharing again.

Minneapolis' Loring Park.

Pridefest.

.45 records cut into black circles

with red and blue labels, quilt square

originals, with the hand-written notes

of personal loss. Hand writing

forever witnessing. The word,

Remember, over and over,

remembering in new ways:

We remember all those lost to AIDS

who had no one to memorialize them.

The names over and over.

T. Charles Steward, Michael Bennett,

names with images of vocation,

Chuck Lund in his chef hat,

the restaurant where he did his cooking.

The dates of shortened lives:

8/30/60-11/4/94. Marc Sawyer.

A gold ring and a red ribbon.

1953-1992.

You don't have to be infected

to be affected. The colors

of the rainbow in the letters.

Quilt patches as tombstones.

So many images of music.

So many musicians.

Not just sons and daughters,

your grandpa, too.

Jim Bodeen

June 2016

Chicago

BETWEEN PLACES WALK

AFTER PHOTOGRAPHING QUILTS

AT THE INDIANA REUNION

Cajun prawns and lemonade

walking Navy Pier in Chicago.

An afternoon away from the car.

The woman saw that book in my hand.

Walk without talking?

I'd never get anywhere!

Each stop with the eye

is another step. I'm looking

into the AIDS quilt, hung on the pier

in 15 blocks crafted from 48,000

individual panels, each remembering

someone who has died of AIDS--

largest community art project

in the world. Each cloth panel a thread.

Here's a house with an open window,

curtains lifted by a quilter's breeze.

The title of the book that stopped

that woman: How to Walk.

I'm supposed to be paying attention.

I got here by walking with the quilter.

Jim Bodeen

26 June 2016s

Chicago, Il

Karen and Jim Bodeen