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.

Kate Reminds Us: Two Calves Are Better than One

I met Kate last month and she shared these two, of her eleven tattoos:

Kate says these don't have specific meanings behind them, she "just liked the art". Nothing wrong with that at all.

On the left calf, Kate has an exquisite black and grey piece by Benjamin Moss at Apocalypse Tattoo in Seattle.

The romantically morbid idea of two skeletons sharing an eternity in the same coffin is a haunting image.

On her right calf is this dagger:

The phrase "MORTE PRIMA DI DISONORE" translates to the expression "Death Before Dishonor". This tattoo was created at Addiction NYC on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan.

Thanks to Kate for sharing these great tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

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.

Niki's Memorial Foot

Alas, with winter setting in, spotting tattoos in public is seasonably challenging. Thank goodness for ink on uncovered extremities, like hands and the occasional foot!

Case in point, earlier this month I met Niki in Penn Station after spotting this dagger on her foot:

She had this, one of her three tattoos, done three or four years ago a couple of years after her father had passed away.

It is a memorial that is based on a necklace her dad wore. When I asked her, after the fact, if she still had the necklace, she said she didn't, but said it was a lot like this one. She added "my dad bought it the Christmas before he passed away and it really showed off his sarcasm and style because he was very much into motorcycles and whatnot".

Wisely, in my opinion, she kept the design, but excised the words on the necklace from the tattoo!

Niki had this done by Marc at Ink Link Tattoos & Piercings in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Thanks to Niki for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Colin's Left Leg is Traditionally Flash-y

I spotted Colin one afternoon while I was waiting for another tattooed individual to get off of her cell phone.

(Not only have I come up with individual terms for things that are associated with inkblogging, but I follow a code, as well. One of its tenets is to never bother someone talking on a cell phone.)

Colin ambled by and I bounded after him, stopping him and asking about his tattoos.

His left leg is covered with traditional flash, from swallows and bombs, roses, death's head moths,


and a pin-up girl, done in the Sailor Jerry style.


He explained that the sleeved left leg is a result of being "overzealous and excited" about tattoos.
Usually I try to talk about one or two pieces, but because most of his work is just flash, I captured most of his calf.

No fascinating stories to tell, just tattoos.

Thanks to Colin for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!

Wilson's Heart Reminds Him of a Painful Loss

Today I'm posting two hearts, spotted on the same day, from two different people in two different places.

First up is Wilson, who has a lot of ink, most of which is tribal-style.

He decided to share, however, this deeply personal piece on his left bicep:


Wilson had this inked after his wife left him and took his kids. It was immensely painful and he found that this tattoo, a heart with a knife through it, helped him heal a lot.

In fact, he said, that six months after she left him, Wilson's wife called him back and made overtures toward reconciliation. He says he looked at his tattoo, a symbol of the pain he had endured, and told her no.

He is hazy about the place where he had this done, but believes it was at a shop in Atlantic City.

Thanks to Wilson for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Michele's First Tattoo: Beautiful Can Also Be Dangerous

I met Michele in the middle of the day last Wednesday. I was riding my bike on a vacation day and she was sitting on the Shore Promenade while on a lunch break.

The tattoo above is small, but I liked how Michele described it. The piece is about sixteen years old and was done by an artist named Vinnie.


This was the first of her three tattoos and she picked it off of the flash art on the walls in his shop.

Michele liked the size of the piece, thought the rose was beautiful, and dagger through the heart next to the rose sends a message. In her words, "if you get too close to something beautiful, you might get hurt."

Thanks to Michele for sharing her first tattoo here with us on Tattoosday!

John's Other Three Tattoos

Last week, I posted the "after" version of a tattoo I spotted early last Fall. The host, John, e-mailed me the updated photos after I spotted him in at the grocery store.

He also sent me shots of his three other pieces, posted above and below.

Via e-mail, John gave me the run-down on the tattoos, all inked at Body Art Studios in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

"The tattoo with the knife through the heart is a memorial tattoo for my grandmother who passed away in 2000. I drew it and Peter [Cavorsi] tattooed it. It took me a few years to get it because I wanted to get the tattoo done on her birthday... October 13, but I wanted to wait for a Friday the 13th 'cause that was her lucky day."

"As for 'Cheech,' it is another memorial tattoo for my Uncle Patty, my grandmother's brother. That is why it is in red, so it looks like the blood dripping from the knife [that] wrote out his name. He got the name 'Cheech' in World War II. It was his nickname, which is weird, because we are Italian and 'Cheech' in Italian is a nickname for Frank. Both of the tattoos are on my left forearm...".

The black and gray piece is a Chinese character [kanji] with ... fire. The symbol means 'art as a skill' and the fire around it represents my passion for the art, as I am practicing to be a tattoo artist myself. It was...my first tattoo, inked by Peter in 2002/2003".

"...Last is the one on my left calf, which in Chinese means "fear no evil". I got that in 2002-2003, as well. It was tattooed in Body Art, but was done by someone who worked for Peter at the time. I think his name was Sig or Zig...".

On a side note, the guy who worked for Peter did my first tattoo, and he went by the name of "Sickie". I think we're talking about the same guy.

Thanks again to John for coming through and sending me the photos and the back stories on his tattoos!

Editor's note: John's comments are 99% verbatim. I took a little editorial liberty with some punctuation and spelling, along with an occasional edit, for the sake of clarity.