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
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
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
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
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
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
HEY, DEE—HEY GRADUATE!
For Deanna Victoria Pappas
9 June 2026
Hey, girl—young woman—Well done!
You carry so much love, and I kinda
wanna look at a few of these things
on the day you’re about to graduate--
but first, I just pruned the pine tree
out front, the one you’ve been styling
on your own, these growing years.
Styling is your specialty, well--
your genius. And you, girl, your
genius IQ is off the charts. It’s
in your eyes—not your make-up
eyes, your inner eyes, the eyes
no one can see. The eyes we all see,
when we say, Deanna. We don’t just say,
Deanna, either. We say, DEEZUS,
and it sounds like Jesus. That’s
what we see, that’s what we say--
because it’s what we’re thinking
when we say, Hey Girl! What’s up!
Style. Well, style is genius. You
did the work to get you here.
Now, girl. You’re about to find out
how much more there is. Let it find you.
When it does, you better believe it.
Love, Gpa
Desire's fire-dreaming
Under its own volition
drops at my doorstep
Jim Bodeen
25 April 2026
Foraging birds from
elsewhere come here for thistles
shitting their grass seed
Jim Bodeen
21 April 2026
What is Cream of Wheat?
Why does it atract peaches
and maple syrup?
Jim Bodeen
20 April 2026
CHAIN SAW OIL, BIRD FEEDER, SWIMMING POOL
The one subject that is truly worthy of a Christian poet:
The great Mystery of God, revealing his mercy to us in Christ.
Thomas Merton, Art & Spirituality
God for Troublemakers and Tom Merton.
What the chain saw makes possible.
Cut birch limbs fire length, bind them
with rope and display them with stones.
Tough beauty to throw or burn. Find a way
to say you’re not too old. The poet,
if he is one, goes to work. His chain saw
gets him a pass with neighbors and
New World Sparrows. Gayle walks Lucy
by garden porch on extended leash.
May she not get caught and fall. Birds,
here, foraging, bathing, frolicking.
They must mate after their bath,
pretending it’s Sunday afternoon.
Their crowned striped heads shine
full of rich Nyger seeds. High quality
thistles, these, spilled seeds from
feeder by the Finches. We’re with them,
Karen and I. We travel in different
circles from Melania and Don.
My cookies for Camp Hope tomorrow
are counted and stored. King Arthur’s
Best Chip Cookie. Two sticks
Land O’Lakes Butter, three kinds
of chocolate, calling for two full cups
of oatmeal pulsed into flour. A cup
of raisins. Protein breakfast for dessert
following the meal of Sloppy Joe’s
and Cole Slaw. Karen’s in her chair.
The cantaloupe and melon
I cut fresh came from this Earth
which we love dearly. All is not
well in the Gulf of Hormuz.
Constant improvising to fix
problems they themselves created.
I think I mentioned the swimming pool.
I’ll get there. I try for 32 minutes
acting as much like mating birds
as I can imagine. This life, this
blessed, blessed life.
Jim Bodeen
11-15 April 2026
WITH SO MANY THINGS TO GET RIGHT
for Jim Hanlen
I’m in the free car wash line reading your poem.
The Mountain’s so kind to greet you,
Mountain meets Poet.
This is Grand Opening.at Ducky Car Wash.
Free All Day.
You can’t tip the workers getting wet.
I say to the man in the necktie,
You’re a bunch of cheap Sons of Bitches.
Other things have to do with cookies.
I’ve found the best oatmeal raisin cookies in town.
Winco and Rosauer’s tied for Best Cookie.
Only Oatmeal Raisin. Winco ‘s three bucks cheaper
for a dozen. They’re not as pretty
but they include pecans.
I told the baker at Rosauer’s she doesn’t get
extra points for what the cookies look like.
The manager at Winco refuses my offer
of the Rosauer cookie. Take me
to the baker, I say, a bit over the top.
I’m still in line at the Car Wash,
writing you with thumbs on my phone.
The boys are wearing ties—neck ties.
I’m pissed they can’t take tips.
You could walk out with real money
in your pockets at 5 o’clock..
500 bucks maybe a grand with tips.
Jim Bodeen
He cracks a tiny smile when I tell him to organize.
I’ll help with the strike if we can drop the wipe-down rags
at 2 pm when lines are long.
You don’t think I’m serious, do you? I say.
I’m on your side, brother.
I’ll show your guys what to do
with those ties on our way to the street.
ON NOT BEING HERE AT EASTER
for KLP
This will be different than your birthday poem
at 20, Kate—that one, so much fun. Yet
listening to you on the phone today
talking with grandma, my tear ducts
emptied at the sound of your voice.
I’ll write, I said. I’m working on an old
word, vocation. Tom Merton, monk,
calls it our work: deep interior.
Your reading tonight from the Dharmapada.
Practical stuff saying, Thrive.
Buddhas only point the way.
Vocation comes from the divine,
a summons. What you do
as a way of life. If I say anymore
mystery disappears. Over the phone,
I remember saying, Be our roshi.
Love, Grandpa
31 March 2026
IN THE PEW, READING MERTON
WHILE BELL RINGERS PRACTICE RINGING
BEFORE WORSHIP, THE SMART PHONE
IN MY POCKET CALLS ME,
And when the phone call comes,
my friend has been pulled over by police
without a license. Would I come
and get him? He’s close. It’s Palm Sunday.
Jesus on a donkey.
And when the grace is gone
we no longer seem to reflect on it.
His car is in the church parking lot now.
He’s walking. And my car is on the curb
where he was stopped. This is what
I know of what’s real and what’s not.
He sits beside me in the pew
and I hand him back his keys.
I thought I had resolved the problem.
I guess not. I do not know who is
speaking these words. Him or me.
For any problem you got. Here we go.
Two choirs surround me singing.
Two choirs singing and ringing.
Jim Bodeen
Palm Sunday, 2026
NOTE TO PASTOR JILL ROSS WITNESSING AT THE BORDER
We lift up our eyes to You in heaven,
O God of eternity, wishing we were poorer,
more silent and more mortified.
Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence
Happy Birthday, Pastor Jill.
Thank you for praying for me.
You’ve always been a monk like that, praying for others.
You make things easier.
And Merton.
When I found him in 1968, just back from Vietnam,
I didn’t know his body was already gone.
I wouldn’t know for certain
until after I was sure he’d gotten
that photograph from the other side
of the mountain.
For those looking for that photograph
is something I pray for. I was reading Four Quartets
with Brother David in the garden.
I wanted to say these things without using words.
I didn’t know how. All I had was Happy Birth Day
Two words. Hyphenated. I didn’t know about the bombs
when I went to bed. Lucky for Merton.
I thought maybe you could feel my breathing.
Or maybe, maybe, you knew I was walking
by hearing my footsteps.
Jim
2 March 2026
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LOVE IN 2026 AND BEYOND
for Barb and Cragg
My hope is in what the eye has never seen.
Thomas Merton, Dialogue with Silence
So many flowers.
So much paint.
So much material to work with.
Silk butterflies from Japan.
So many ways to remember
Harriet Powers. So much gathered
testimony. So many threads.
Barb, Karen, Harriet.
So many mothers of beauty.
The yellow iris bulb is a world.
Jim
5 March 2026
THE GIFT OF LUCILLE CLIFTON
FOR PASTOR ANN MURPHY
She has the voice poets and pastors wish they had.
Doesn’t fall for seduction.
Born with 12 fingers and 12 toes,
revelation accompanies her birth.
Lucille Clifton appears in 1936
like Rosalee Tompkins on this post card.
She writes, feathers waving as we dance
towards Jesus. She’s with Phillis Wheatley,
who stamps these lines valid. Phillis
who gets her name from the slave ship Phillis.
Lucy, light, Luz Bel. My mother’s name.
Every time I read her poems I get an education.
She knows what women know. Knows men.
Knows these too are your children,
this too is your child. She knew early
what this was about.
She is always dangerous, Lucille Clifton.
Jim Bodeen
African-American History Month, 2026
POST SCRIPT FOR WIL HAYGOOD
This was Vietnam. This was the war
where it was time to speak one’s mind.
Wil Haygood, Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
Mail had already been stopped when LBJ
landed at Cam Ranh Bay, Christmas, 1967.
Thank you for War Within A War, Wil Haygood.
I’m at the 85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon.
No mail. We’re together, talking shit.
We’re together 4 April 68, too. Dap.
My sign says, This way home. I’m
with the brothers, listening. It’s Tet.
If we survive this, they’ll send us back to the States.
Martin. Then Kennedy. Your credibility
dapping. What’s goin’ on Lou Rauls?
We’re evacuating 700 Gi’s a month.
Everything but the music. OK.
I’d say, Everything and the music.
634-5789, Wilson Pickett. Call me,
it’s a song. I’ve danced on the porch
at Motown. It’s closed on Friday nights.
A boy, relocated from North Dakota.
Your p.s. I hear your eyes on Hegseth.
Jim Bodeen
5 March 2026
REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE’S BEND
“Strike the rock and water will come out of it.”
Exodus 17: 6
Moses would love the quilts from Gee’s Bend.
The commemorative stamps would would startle and silence,
he might drop the stone. He’d look at the meteor shower
in Harriet Power’s quilt, and call it scripture.
Two surviving quilts proclaiming,
Nothing is missing, calling for a third
tablet of stone. He’d wonder what else he missed
lost in God’s clouds. Gee’s Bend, The Pettway Plantation.
A husband’s work clothes cut out and sewn
for God’s glory. Go down, Moses. Strike
the rock and water will come. All right,
Moses, and that water came. Grant you that.
But Egypt, now. Tears in the water.
Quilts for God come from God.
And that Middle Passage, Moses.
Call that Middle Passage what it is.
Quilts from Gee’s Bend testify, but
call Egypt by its real name.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2026
FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK
An art teacher, Jennie Smith, saw Harriet Powers' quilt at a cotton fair, and sought her out. Ms. Powers then, described each block to Smith, and because of that, we have Harriet Powers' words available to us today. This story documents how her grave site was rediscovered, and a new headstone dedicated. Harriet Powers's quilts are "documents in fabric." If you follow to her portrait, notice how she's dressed. She is "dressed up." And her clothes are also documents. That apron--look at it It's a uniform and a story. For instance, ask an indigenous woman about her apron, a Mexican woman about her "delantal." Its power and place. Look at the thread and imagery of the apron Harriet Powers wears. And in this image, below: Look at the falling stars recorded in cloth from 19 May 1780.
Harriet Powers lives now on the U. S. Commemorative Postal Stamp issued 28 February 2026, the last day of African American History month. Two of her quilts survive and can be seen in museums. Her story no longer confines itself to her quilts. I, too, survive as a fabric block of sorts. It is the first weekof March and my country has entered a new war, and the white chalk of days continues. On Thursdays I stand with others on a street corner for 30-minutes with my cardboard sign, shaped by taking apart a card box box. I have taken lines from Ukrainian poets and written them on the cardboard with different colored marking pens. I find the making of the signs a meditation, as well as a form of petitionary prayer.
My wife, Karen, is a quilter and fabric artist. She’s sewing today with others. I helped load her car with her sewing machine and materials. I put her fold-up wagon in the trunk to carry her machine. She’s working with little houses cut out on fabric. Each house is on a quilting square, or block, they call them. I made her a honey and peanut butter sandwich with some grapes for her lunch, and she sat down with me to eat her yogurt before leaving to quilt. She brought in two squares for me to look at. The houses have two windows, or two doors, they could be either, couldn’t they? I ask her. Yes, I guess they could. I intended them as windows, though. Flowers accompany either of them, be they doors or windows. They’re so colorful. They could be curtains, too! Yes. They could be.
She drove off a few minutes ago. She’ll be gone most of the day, cutting out little houses on fabric, creating a neighborhood of fabric houses blocked out on cotton. I can only see so far, and can’t imagine what else will happen during this day of documentation, Of creation. I have a couple of hours myself to do with as I like. I began a new notebook this morning before walking, so I have that set up before me, and I hope to write a couple of post card poems, attaching different panels from Harriet Powers’ quilt newly created in the form of stamps. I will take them to the Post Office, where the postal clerk will provide me with a hand cancellation across the stamp in red ink. I find this last step wonderful. It makes me a bit dizzy. All of this, to tell the truth, makes me dizzy—more than dizzy.
Jim Bodeen
6 March 2026
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