The Tattooed Poets Project: Jonathan Moody

Generally, we celebrate tattooed poets during National Poetry Month, but is there ever a bad time to embrace poetry and the inked wordsmiths who ply the trade?

Earlier this month, we received this photo from Jonathan Moody:

Photo by Ricardo Alanis

Jonathan wanted to share the tattoo you can see on his right forearm. He explains:

"In anticipation of my first-born seed, Avery Langston Moody, who will be due on October 29th, 2013, I wanted to get my first tattoo. After searching on-line, I found a salient piece of artwork that contained two tattoos in one: an ankh superimposed over the Eye of Horus. The latter symbolizes my philosophy on fatherhood and writing, and the former underscores my wife’s personal struggle to conceive a child. In Egyptian mythology, The Eye of Horus represents protection and sacrifice. In other cultures, it symbolizes a human’s capacity to 'see beyond.'  As a husband and a soon-to-be father, I am a protector and am willing to offer myself as a sacrifice if my wife or son were ever in harm’s way. As an artist, I perceive the world via an alternative (i.e. creative) lens. At times, what appears in front of the artist can prevent him or her from focusing on the big picture; however, those who can access a higher plane of consciousness can look into the world as opposed to at it.

Possessing the ability to interpret and/or create metaphor is one byproduct of accessing a high level of consciousness. Technology, comet, dinosaur. To the person looking at the world, those three words are unrelated. A person looking into the world could create a metaphor that shows how all three words are linked: Technology is a comet obliterating any dinosaur roaming in the field of education. Metaphor is a bridge between seemingly bizarre connections. The Eye of Horus tattoo on my right forearm reminds me that my poetry should 'see beyond' what is possible to the eyes of the average reader.

The ankh is symbolic for life and fertility. Over the course of five years, my wife has struggled to achieve the latter. She’s battled endometriosis and ovarian cysts. Injected numerous fertility drugs. Endured a failed IUI. Fortunately, in January of 2013, her first IVF attempt was successful. Now, seven months into her pregnancy, she has a three-pound hyperactive boy kicking her right side nonstop.

Anyone who looks at my forearm tattoo will merely see an ankh superimposed over the Eye of Horus, not my wife’s fertility struggle intertwined with my struggle to become a paternal figure. As Larry, the tattoo artist at Dago’s (off of 45 South), pressed the stencil against my forearm and started doing the outline, I had considered telling him the background story. Instead, I focused. Focused less on the pain and more on keeping my right arm still for thirty minutes. Did not want the ankh to be mistaken for a lollipop."

We're honored that Jonathan chose to share this very personal story behind this tattoo. Congratulations to him and his wife on the upcoming birth of their son!

Jonathan also sent us this powerful poem, which references his ink:

SPAWN

I came to Half Price Books
hoping to find hidden Todd McFarlane
gems in graphic novel bins,
but there were as many cop cars
behind my ride as there are traffic
lights in Fresno, Texas.

My fam told me that’s how Pearland
police rolls: pulling
people over for driving three miles
above the speed limit; for not
signaling when switching lanes.

Green paint dripped
off my Chevy Caprice as if it melted
in the triple digit heat, but I was chill
chill even though the white furry dice
dangling from the mirror served as a reminder
that Driving While Black was a gamble;

I’m a veteran actor. Spent
my whole career playing the role
of an innocent man who’s convinced
himself he’s done something wrong.
This scene, no different.
Only one take to look terrified
cops would discover Colombian
raw hidden beneath
the passenger seat.

My motivation: stay alive
& return home to my pregnant wife,
so I turned down the bass
& stopped rhyming
along with Chuck D.
Exercised the right to remain
quiet on the set.

Thought I was chill chill,
not the irredeemable
monster spawn who made
a deal in Hell so he could

come back to Earth & avenge
the deaths of defenseless people
whose lives were snuffed
by the police bullets
their taxes bought.

But I felt the six hour copacetic
cosmetics job it took for me
to look human became ruined
from the sweat trickling
down my forehead:
probable cause that deep
inside I resembled
the irredeemable monster spawn
Society made me out to be.

Regrouped. Visualized
my Freedom scraping
against the coral reef of hard time.

Stuffed the license,
registration, & proof of insurance
into my smart mouth,
& feared my acting chops
would peel away like the dead
skin around my freshly
inked ankh.

~ ~ ~

Jonathan Moody received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and his BS in Psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana. He’s also a Cave Canem alum whose poetry has appeared in African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Xavier Review, and numerous other journals. In 2012, he was selected by a committee to be a featured reader in Houston’s Public Poetry Reading Series. Moody also appeared in Houston’s 2013 Word Around Town Poetry Tour lineup. He is the author of The Doomy Poems (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and lives in Fresno, Texas, with his wife.

Thanks to Jonathan for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday here in August!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kimberly Escamilla

We here at Tattoosday had already decided to continue the Tattooed Poets Project in the "off" months (that is, from May through March, when it was not National Poetry Month), when I received a message from Kimberly Escamilla asking what had happened to the contribution she had submitted back in January.

I slapped palm to forehead when I realized, I had lost someone in the shuffle. The continuation of the Tattooed Poets Project was a perfect chance for redemption.

Kimberly is no stranger to Tattoosday, having participated in the Tattooed Poets Project back in 2011 (here), when she had a different last name. She was kind enough to reach out to me to share again and, also, kind enough to forgive me for overlooking her contribution. So, without further delay, here is the photo she sent along:

She noted that this tattoo was "not full of fun colors" like her others, but that it was "way more meaningful" to her. She elaborated:

"We lost our daughter Sophia to Trisomy 18. We chose to induce as the disease is most often fatal in the first few months of life. I wrote an article about it here at the Huffington Post. We decided to get tattoos to honor her, and we learned that Mary Joy is open to using the remains of a loved one in the ink. Since Sophia is a Greek name, we decided to have the whole thing done in ancient Greek lettering--It's just her first name and the date we induced April 4, 2012. Mary Joy was able to do the tattoo on August 11, 2012, the day before Sophia was supposed to be born."

I do recommend clicking through on Kimberly's link to the Huffington Post article in the paragraph above. It is a brave and wrenching account of losing a child.

The artist Mary Joy, who is referenced above, is Mary Joy Scott, who works out of Ed Hardy's Tattoo City in San Francisco.

Kimberly sent us the accompanying poem, as well:

Wisdom at Sweeties

The neighborhood bar in North Beach is barren
except for one clutch of retired Italians whose late
lunch has blurred into an evening of beer and gossip.

I know what my husband is going to order before we claim our stools,
before we leave the tattoo shop and walk the three blocks,
before Mary Joy unties the baggie of our daughter’s ashes,
lowers her head and needle, thanking us for trusting her hand
and the ink that would bond Sophia to both of us for life.

Shots of Ouzo, tinged blue, like the inside of ice
are poured neat from a dusty bottle.
The bartender-mother asks why—are you Greek?
We show her our saran-wrapped wrists,
the Hellenic epitaph, knocking-back the first round.

As we savor the sweet anise’s burn, I think of the monks
at Mount Athos who could never have predicted
their pet-project some 700 years later would treat
sour stomachs and jack-knifed hearts around the globe.

The bartender-mother and eavesdropping Italians listen to our saga.
Rapt and teary, they raise their glasses to the purity of grief,
the kind of grief that a tattoo and Ouzo can only begin to admit.

~ ~ ~

Kimberly Escamilla’s recent work has appeared or forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow, Plath Profiles, 5AM, DMQ Review, My Baby Rides the Short Bus anthology, Naugatuck River Review, and Cimarron Review. She has taught college-level writing and literature in the San Francisco Bay Area for 19 years and is the director of The International Poetry Library of San Francisco. She lives on the coast, a few miles north of Half Moon Bay, CA with her husband Michael and son Harrison.

We thank Kimberly for sharing these powerful tattoos and poem with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project, Volume 5, A Postscript

Cheryl Maddalena's Beautiful tattoo from 2009

As I look back at the fifth installment of the April tattooed poets extravaganza, I am astonished by the amazing array of talented poets who have contributed to Tattoosday over the years.

This year's contributors totaled 35, and we had even more than that many who had previously expressed interest and did not submit their work in time.

That said, I have high hopes for the 2014 edition, which is only 11 months away. Also, I am going to attempt to add more tattooed poets throughout the year, contributing in non-poetry months. Just to keep our collective appetites whetted.

The list of people I would like to thank grows each year. I'd start with directing readers to the Tattooed Poets Project here and expressing my appreciation to the 155 poets who have appeared on Tattoosday over the past five years.

I am also deeply indebted to Stacey Harwood and David Lehman at the Best American Poetry blog. Their continued support over the years has been immeasurable and they have been nothing but encouraging.

I still maintain that the wonderful writer, Dorianne Laux, is also someone to whom I am deeply indebted. She referred me to a slew of tattooed poets in the first year of this project, and each year sends me more subjects.

I want to thank all the poets who answered my initial inquiries, especially those without tattoos, who often directed me to poets who they knew to be inked.

And finally, I want to thank all of my readers, in and out of the poetry community, who have continued to support and read Tattoosday, and have encouraged me each year to come up with thirty posts (or more) to help celebrate the wonders of the written word and the beauty of tattoos.

Bill Cohen
5/1/2013

The Tattooed Poets Project: Carl Phillips

We're closing out this year's Tattooed Poets Project with Carl Phillips. I've had the pleasure, over the years, of meeting Carl and hearing him read on at least two different occasions at the New School in Manhattan, in conjunction with the Best American Poetry readings. Needless to say, when Carl agreed to participate, I was thrilled.

Here's a photo of Carl's tattoo:

Carl explains:

"I got the tattoo after seeing a compass on a map in my copy of Moby Dick. I chose not to include the N,S,W,E part, to suggest that I lack direction, though the compass itself suggests the desire for direction ... it's on my left upper arm. A guy named Barber did it, at a place here in St. Louis called Iron Age."

Carl pointed me to a few poems online that he said we could share here, and I chose this one:

Leda, After the Swan

Perhaps,
in the exaggerated grace
of his weight
settling,

the wings
raised, held in
strike-or-embrace
position,

I recognized
something more
than swan, I can't say.

There was just
this barely defined
shoulder, whose feathers
came away in my hands,

and the bit of world
left beyond it, coming down

to the heat-crippled field,

ravens the precise color of
sorrow in good light, neither
black nor blue, like fallen
stitches upon it,

and the hour forever,
it seemed, half-stepping
its way elsewhere--

then
everything, I
remember, began
happening more quickly.

~ ~ ~

You can hear Carl read the poem here.

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Silverchest (2013). He's a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

Thanks to Carl for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Susan Briante

Our next tattooed poet is Susan Briante:

Susan explains the origins of this tattoo:

"I got my tattoo in Albuquerque although its origins can be found in Oklahoma, where I took my first job out of college working for the now defunct Tulsa Tribune. I was making $13,000/year as a reporter covering public education. I rented a room in house with a view to the Sunoco refinery. I was in love with two men, the closest of whom lived almost 700 miles away. Tattoo shops were illegal in Oklahoma at the time, so a friend told me about a tattoo artist from Arizona who would fly into Tulsa and tattoo after hours in the beauty parlor where her mother worked.

I picked out the design from a Mexican milagro, (literally 'miracle') a small metal charm usually in the shape of body part (eyes, lungs, arms) that could be pinned to the robe of a religious statue as offering. They were supposed to concretize the prayers of the faithful. A lung-shaped milagro, for example, might be pinned to the robe on a Virgin of Guadalupe statue along with prayers for the health of a family member with a cough. For my tattoo, I chose a milagro heart with a dagger through it that I thought was supposed to ward off a broken heart.

We awaited the arrival of the tattoo artist from Arizona. And when he didn’t show, I drove with my friend to Albuquerque—and got my tattoo there—where I’d met one of the men I had fallen in love with. The one I would marry and with whom I’d move to Mexico City. The one I would divorce.

I came back to the states, became a poet and started grad school, fell in and out of love a few more times. Early in an intense courtship with the poet Farid Matuk, we took photos of each other’s tattoos and started using them as screen savers on our cell phones. In the ten years since, we’ve moved in together, moved to Dallas, had a baby, got married in cupola of a Marfa, Texas, courthouse, switched cell phones and numbers, but we still have the same tattoo photos as screen savers.

A few month ago I figured out what my next tattoo will be (Farid already has his) a copy of the birthmark that our daughter has on the inner arch of her right foot."

Farid's tattoo appeared earlier today on Tattoosday.

Susan directed us to her poem "Parking Space," which appeared here on Verse Daily:

Parking Space

Billboards yield to burdened cloud,
a sulfur pink of population, supply-side chorus
in the static between stations

while the evening sits with its shirt unbuttoned,
while the engine sings bones and armor,
thin legged ponies and miles for water.

Jagged as sleep the sudden breech of elements,
rain scrubs stone, halogen rusts the sky.
You find the country pricked with neon,

spread across the windshield like a centerfold,
until you smell the buckshot, watch the scout
who parts branches with a lover's rough fingers.

As if there might be a place for us:
porch towns between the relay towers,
a folding chair just inside the garage,

a bed of lottery tickets or a fistful of keys.
A bowl at the table. A parking space.
A window full of shallow hills.

~ ~ ~

Copyright © 2007 Susan Briante All rights reserved
from Pioneers in the Study of Motion
Ahsahta Press
Reprinted by Tattoosday with permission

~ ~ ~

Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion (2007) and Utopia Minus (2011) both published by Ahsahta Press. Her chapbook, The Market is a Parasite that Looks like a Nest, part of an on-going lyric investigation of the stock market, was recently published by Dancing Girl Press. She is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. She lives in east Dallas with the poet Farid Matuk.

Thanks to Susan for sharing her tattoo and her poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Farid Matuk

Our next tattooed poet is Farid Matuk.

Check out this photo he sent:

That's Farid's foot on the bottom. He explains:

"I had this piece done at Suffer City Tattoos in Dallas, TX on New Year's day 2013. I believe the artist's name is Robert. I chose to replicate a freckle my daughter has on side of her right foot. I wanted to place a crown atop the freckle to suggest the special place she has in my heart.

She's also bossy in an endearing way, and I often feel I'm in training not to serve her needs (as the martyr model of parenting would have it), but to definitely make a place for her needs and agendas in my otherwise self-directed life. I guess this is typical of most parent/toddler relationships and the crown helps me commemorate this dynamic. I took the stylized crown design from a tattoo I saw show up on one of the many tattoo boards I follow on Pinterest. The original design has the crown adorning the top of a bird's head."

Farid sent us his poem, "My Daughter All Yourn," which, he explained, "is one of a series of sonnets [he] wrote after studying the sonnets of Bernadette Mayer. It appears (here) on the Poets.org/Academy of American Poets website."

My Daughter All Yourn

will she be closer to the falling away of the gaze of things than others? 

hands on the water she calls scene setting

hands on the table water over the houses and hills swimming

not the ocean or the sea but the frame of time she’ll tell of

wild happy yeses in her hands

she bites through in rage when rage

comes to her or we do and she’s too small a flag

what does our house say?  these borrowed things solid and whole

fabric lost to her a greasy boy speaks fast at the pizza stand

more available to be seen the young in their concerns

amidst the old artifice paint a boat and it will mean a dream

put names of your dear ones in it all yourn standing up

these little soft hands she bites through the bright white light of summer

shines off sand and vinyl siding itself composed against the salt

~ ~ ~

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and the chapbooks Is It The King? (Effing Press, 2006) and Riverside (Longhouse, 2011). New poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming online at Poets.org and in print in Black Warrior Review, Third Coast, Iowa Review, Mandorla, Critical Quarterly (UK), The Baffler, and other journals. This Isa Nice Neighborhood was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Prize, and received honorable mention in the 2011 Arab American Book Award. Matuk is a contributor to Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays On the Poetry of Araki Yasusada (Shearsman, 2011) and to the poetry anthologies American Odysseys: Writing from New Americans (Dalkey Archive, 2013) and Beyond the Field (Counterpath, forthcoming). His new chapbook, My Daughter La Chola, is forthcoming from Ahsahta in March, 2013.

Thanks to Farid for sharing his poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Christopher Arigo

Our next tattooed poet is Christopher Arigo, who sent us this image from his thigh:

He tells us:

Often referred to as “The Shaman” or “The Sorceror,” my tattoo is based on a sketch by Henri Breuil of a cave painting from a cavern in Trois-Frères, Ariège, France. Breuil, a French archeologist, claimed that the drawing/etching represented a Paleolithic shaman, a kind of happy hunting juju. I’ve always been intrigued by this particular image---I remember seeing a picture of it when I was fairly young, probably in some Time-Life book about cave art or something. For me, it represents a connection to our not-so-distant Paleolithic past and I do hunt, so maybe some of its juju will rub off. I have several other cave art tattoos, so it’s also part of an ongoing theme on my body. There’s something very visceral and ancient about it. There is also the question: why did they make this art?

The tattoo was done by Riley Baxter at Pussykat Tattoo in Las Vegas.

The poem that Christopher sent us keeps with the Paleothic theme:

Considering the fossils

once sap

now combustible

stone

once called electron

god-tears

carved petrified sun

once mixed


with rose-oil

for failing eyes

now eyes

warm to the touch

burned as incense

burning to remember

and when you dig

it is hard to believe

the stone

was once wood

its rings now ring


with a finger's flick

no longer

ligneous

bark and cambium

visible

in cross-section

how to believe

that gingko leaves

leave behind

fan-shapes


veins and chloroplasts

almost intact

no xylem

left after rain

and pressure

and layers

and layers

of sand and relentless

lithography

~ ~ ~ 

Christopher Arigo’s first poetry collection Lit Interim won the 2001-2002 Transcontinental Poetry Prize (selected by David Bromige) and was published by Pavement Saw Press (2003). His second collection In the archives (2007) was released by Omnidawn Publishing. His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines including Colorado Review, New American Writing, Barrow Street, and many others. He co-edits the literary journal Interim with poet Claudia Keelan and is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University.

Thanks to Christopher for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: David Jonathan Newman

We have another returning Tattooed Poets Project alumnus today, David.Jonathan Newman.

David's previous contribution appeared two years ago, here.

This is a collage of a work-in-progress that David sent along for 2013:

David explains that this is:

"...a three-quarter sleeve on my left arm by none other than the famous Bruce Kaplan, owner of Lark Tattoo in Wesbury NY and Albany NY. We've both been very excited about this project and it's been in progress for over a year now; excited to be getting well into the color portion of it. Essentially, the tattoo is Bruce's take on a wicked thunderstorm; tidal waves, thunder and lightning, intimidating clouds and fire. Towards the end of the tattoo down by my forearms, the sun's rays come out through the cloud cover and the storm breaks. I've been through a lot in my life (just like many people) and this tattoo, like many of mine, is meant to remind me that I can get through every hardship I have coming; and that I was able to get through everything that's been thrown at me so far.

The quote in script was a previous tattoo that Bruce has been going around... it was done years ago by Chris Koutsis at DaVinci Tattoo in Wantagh NY. It says It's What You Love, Not What Loves You and was inspired by the Charlie Kaufman movie Adaptation."

David sent in this recent poem of his called "the night":

the night.

night comes

night comes exhaled in
casually flourishing in the expanse as if we acquiesced to its maturation
planting its flag among the corpses of our plans for the day, unaccomplished
and the cold
glacial, numbing wind searing across flesh and foliage
air in your lungs like an icestorm
liquid nitrogen eventide

the night is isolation
abandonment and abated breath
a brilliant abattoir of allegiances meant only to separate us and conquer hearts
colonize your capillaries with Cimmerian shade
circumventing circulation

I poured out a little of my drink for her, it froze instantly as it hit the permafrost
exhaled into slow smoke, dancing in the lantern light
frustrated that something so inanimate could take on such life
such alluring life in this ruination and gloom
I miss you
god, I miss you
the way your teeth always backdrop for your smile
the way we interlock perfectly before dreams take us
the way you shuddershake when you climax

you left me

and I go unaccompanied into the night
with this drink and these thoughts
and this lantern
and this love

~ ~ ~

David Jonathan Newman has been a poet and vocalist/lyricist in bands, both on Long Island, NY and in Miami, FL. He is working on a collection of poetry, writes music as a solo artist and has a blog (http://captainselfdestruct.blogspot.com) where he posts both his solid works and stream of consciousness ideas. He's been winning poetry contests since 6th grade, but recently he's been featured in online publications including Haggard & Halloo Publications, quite a few times - and even the Tattooed Poets Project, back in 2011. He's currently floundering back and forth between wanting to pursue his poetry pseudo-career to get more of his work out there, and the soul-crushing hopelessness that any poet feels, wanting to pursue their medium in the year 2013.

Thanks to David for once again contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

©2013 The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Erika Lutzner

Today's tattooed poet is Erika Lutzner, who sent us this photo:

Erika explains:

I have five tattoos which tell the history of my story; skin is my canvas. The tattoo that I want to share is of Ganesha. I chose to get the tattoo of Ganesha because he is the remover of obstacles, and I was at a point in my life where my path was far from clear. Ganesha watches over me and keeps me grounded and safe. I also have a tattoo of Hanuman carrying a mountain. He represents strength and knowledge. Anil Gupta did all my tattoos. He is an amazing artist. He works on the Lower East Side at his shop, Inkline Studio Inc.

Erika sent us this poem, as well, which was first published in failbetter, July, 2009.

Blackness Slips Through Sundays

A mirror cannot speak truth
Just as a woman’s face masks
a madness
The man in the mug shot
Could be anyone’s husband, friend, father, —
The woman hides behind
fiction

~ ~ ~

Erika Lutzner is the editor of Scapegoat Review. She curates Upstairs at Erika’s, a monthly writer's salon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her work can be found in various places such as failbetter, Eclectica Magazine, and Tygerburing Literary Journal. Her first book, Invisible Girls, by dancing girl press as well as a second book, Some Things Are True That Never Happened (an anthology) are both out. She is working on various new projects. You can find Erika at http://upstairsaterikas.com/ as well as http://scapegoatreview.com/.

Thanks to Erika for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Ethan Hon

Next up in the Tattooed Poets Project is Ethan Hon.

I met up with Ethan in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn earlier this month and took photos of three of his tattoos.

Ethan credits the talented artists at Fineline Tattoo in Manhattan.

Ethan explained that "the tattoos of Keats [above] and f(x) [below] were done by Mehai Bakaty." He added, "Keats is self-explanatory [and] F(x) I got done as reminder to be a person, to function."

As for the third tattoo (directly below), Ethan explained,

"Mike Bakaty tattooed Boy with Machine by Richard Lindner [and] was done because I couldn't stop looking at it and also because as Deleuze and Guattari remind us: A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.

I have two other tattoos not pictured: Cascading black hearts and [one] of Ulysses with his dog once he has returned, along with the Arnold Geulincx phrase, 'Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis' translated roughly as 'Where you are worth nothing, then you shall want for nothing' beneath it.

Ethan sent us this poem:

Red Hook

Jesus has dicks for hands
we must not tell him. Of course,
we will never tell him. Again,
or rather once, Dan walked, drenched
from New Jersey, home to New Jersey.
Last night I lay on the floor with a dog
named Pirate. Don’t tell Creezy.
When Santo told me his tattoo
was of his brother, I told him he should
never wear sleeves. It was not but
it was warm. I should only think
of things that are dripping with fuck--
across her lips, I did not negotiate a life
preserver. The world opens to my de-claring.
To have once been enamored is nice
but now I think everyone is divorcing,
Sail by me on your bicycles,
saying, “See you next Tuesday.”

~ ~ ~

Ethan J. Hon is from Omaha, Nebraska. He is a co-founder of JERRY MAGAZINE. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Screen and Paper, TheThe, The New Inquiry, Dossier, Tin House, Cimarron Review, Cannibal, Nebraska Review, and Assembly Magazine. His paper “It Is Easier to Raise a Shrine than Bring the Deity Down to Haunt It: Beckett in the Blogosphere” was presented in June of 2011 at Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive International Conference. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Thanks to Ethan for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Laura Mullen

Our next tattooed poet is Laura Mullen, who sent us this photo of a koi on her ankle:.

Laura explains:

"The fish was a celebration of a book, early on (#2 maybe?)--somewhere before I realized how serious I was about this book stuff? I mean, these days, I think a bottle (or so) of champagne is fine now (I'm glad I don't have 7 or 8 tattoos!) (I have two); I'm more like, Okay that's awesome, another book, now let's get back to work.

(I'd like another tattoo at some point but the right place and occasion need to be clear.)
This Koi was done is San Francisco at a studio my friend Joshua Clover recommended: 222 Tattoo. [The shop closed in 2000, according to references here and here.]

Can't recall the name of the artist who did the work, sorry…there was some effort put in, as you can tell, and the fish--out of the sun mostly--is holding up well."

Laura was kind enough to send along the following poem which "is unpublished and newish":

The Plastic Wrapper

The war on drugs
The war on terror
The war on kids
The war on bullshit
The war on drugs
The war on guns
The war on health
The war on bacon
The war on drugs
The war on war
The GOP war on voting
The Left’s war on fertility
The war on Weed
The war on salt
The war on poverty
The war on women
The war on moms
The Republican war on Science
Why can’t the army win the war on suicide
The war on truth
The war on fun
Stop the war on Iran before it starts
The war on drugs
The war on terror
The war on coal
The war on Democracy
The war on sharing
The war on Terror
The war on Drugs
The war on free clicks
The war on health
The war on poverty
The war on cancer
The war on drugs
The war on drugs is a failure
The war on evil
The war on the war on coal
The war on drugs
The war on drugs is just plain crazy
The war on terror
House approves stop the war on coal bill
The war on work
War on terror the board game
The war on Islam
Iraq War
End the war on pubic hair
The war on cameras
The war on drugs
The war on success
The war on bacon
The war on cancer
The war on Christmas
Gulf war
The war on Choice
The war on bugs
The war against boys
The war on immigrants
The war on poverty
The war on Pellagra
The battle for the war on women
The war on terror
The war on coal is a myth
The war on drugs is a failure
The war on Children
The war on women
The war on silver
The war on wolves
The war on terror is over
The war on kids
The war on the middle class
The war on the poor
The war on animals
The war on cancer
The war on terror
The war on Christmas
The war on drugs
The war on drugs the war on drugs
The war on democracy
The war on bugs
The war on terror
Rupert Murdoch’s war on journalism
The Christian right and the war on America
The war on drugs
The war on women
The war on Iraq
The war on drugs the war on democracy
The war on the bill of rights
The war on baby boomers
The war on American jobs
The war on business
The war on success
The war on gays
The war against the weak
The war on doping
The war on wrong
An end to the war on drugs?
The war on terror is ‘over’
The war on cameras
The war on Syria
The war on drugs is lost
The war on women
The war on men
The war on teachers
The war on health
The war on finance
The war on margarine
The war on bagpipes
The war on Wisconsin
The war on Sexual Temptation
The war on crooked police
The war on pizza
The war on java
The war on Nixon
The war of art
The war on everything
Defend America

~ ~ ~

Laura Mullen is the author of seven books: Enduring Freedom: A Little Book of Mechanical Brides, just out from Otis Books / Seismicity Editions, and The Surface, After I Was Dead, Subject and Dark Archive (University of California Press, 2011), The Tales of Horror, and Murmur. Recognitions for her poetry include Ironwood’s Stanford Prize, two Board of Regents ATLAS grants, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors. She has had several MacDowell Fellowships and is a frequent visitor at the Summer Writing Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa. Her work has been widely anthologized and is included in American Hybrid (Norton), and I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues). Undersong, the composer Jason Eckardt’s setting of “The Distance (This)” (from Subject) was released on Mode records in 2011. Mullen is the McElveen Professor in English at LSU and a special interest delegate in Creative Writing for the Modern Language Association. She is a contributing editor for the on-line poetry site The Volta.

Thanks to Laura for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Bridget Lowe

Our next tattooed poet is Bridget Lowe, who sent us this photo:

Bridget explains:

"I got this tattoo rather impulsively in the fall of 2008 in Syracuse, New York, at the excellent Halo Tattoo. I had recently found out that my surname came with a motto, Spero meliora, which translates to 'I hope for better things.' I just thought it was hilarious and apt that the Lowe family motto pronounced to merely hope, while so many other family mottoes announce intentions to destroy, maim, annihilate, etc. The motto seemed like a weirdly accurate summation of my Irish Catholic ancestors, who were overall a suffering bunch, from coal miners to morphine addicts to alcoholics to religious fanatics to general melancholics. Better things--that’s not much to ask for, and they asked so nicely. It really killed me. "

Bridget was also kind enough to send us this poem:

Heaven

The villagers are reading hot guts
and drinking tonics. I’m relaxing
on a rock, sunning my midsection,
my delicate white legs.
The palm trees stand stiff
in the wind, archaic, shyly optimistic,
foreign. A Cuban boy
presents me with a muffin, his homeland
a mere neck’s-turn away.
My hair blows this way
and that, as if I’m the featured guest
in a music video from my childhood.
For every broken heart, one golf course.
Everything comes out even.
The birds call me by name
and while I’m distracted, fish heap themselves
into my basket. And the loaves,
the loaves! They multiply.

~ ~ ~

Bridget Lowe is the author of At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, The Best American Poetry (2011), and elsewhere. She has received a "Discovery"/Boston Review award and fellowships to attend The MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lives in Kansas City.

Thanks to Bridget for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.