Welcome back

FOR ANGELS STANDING AT THE FOUR CORNERS

“For me, that includes the many millions of ruined gay lives…”

     --Anthony Heilbut, Harper’s Magazine, February, 2017

I’m not spread across four States

hands in Colorado and New Mexico

with feet next door in Arizona and Utah.

No angel, either. Eyes strapped

to John on Patmos. I saw this,

reading the story in Harper’s.

I saw this. The number

that no man could number.

Revelations 7:9. Black gay corpses

outnumbering four thousand lynchings.

Let me try this in Spanish: Era

tan grande que nadie podía contarla.

Suffering in the pew comes down to here.

I saw this number.

Jim Bodeen 

26 February 2017

AFTER SNAPPING THE PICTURE

WITH MY CELL-PHONE CAMERA

It made me cry, that photo. Skiing

on my mountain. My country

on overloaded time. Image

arriving through song.

The child's plastic bag

of gold fish crackers. Her cousin

taking the toy black spider

from her parka pocket.

My grandchildren at lunch

in the lodge, seated at pine table

full of sunshine. Me, looking

at the match-book-sized paper

in my writing,

I am hiding behind children,

using them as shields.

Black spider on top of the crackers--

a piece of paper scribbled with words.

I snap the picture. On skis,

on my mountain. Over-loaded,

I become other to myself.

Jim Bodeen

23 February 2017

WELCOME BACK

When calls began arriving,

men angry and women traumatized,

I found myself first engaged,

then immersed. Sometime later

I knew I had been here before.

Belief within me, the letter

triggers the poem going beyond.

Called out by God or natural forces,

undetected and undetonated

bombs hidden in my brain

exploding. When I recovered,

cleared by modern medicine,

[And the Machi in Chile reading urine],

I was left with no filters.

Some of the blindness mine.

30 years ago. 50 years ago.

The Again and again of it.

That became the journey,

walking into Safeway,

overheard comments in pews.

Arrival of the autocratic state

slides in with a sigh of relief

in the community. You can

hear people say,

from this election: Now

can we have some rest?

Can we just move on? First as question,

repeating itself as imperative,

Just move on, already!

People leaving fingerprints everywhere.

Would I still drink from the common cup?

I remember Christians returning

to the tiny cups in droves

during the height of the Aids epidemic.

Did I have anything in common

with the faithful? I know how you vote.

You've been fingerprinted by your coffee group.

Your doctor files your medical records.

Everyone in the choir knows who's giving blow jobs.

Where did you put your Constitution?

Living the unfiltered life returns.

I recognize it in the young, going active,

for the first time in their lives.

Robert Moses walking through Africa after SNCC.

Start the poetry now. Crazy Horse dressed

in clothes made in China.

            Anyway,

What a word, that. Anyway

you can. Make that way.

Make a way any way you can,

Way Maker.

Jim Bodeen

25 February 2017