The Tattooed Poets Project: Margaret Bashaar

Today's tattooed poet is Margaret Bashaar, who sent us this stunning photo:

Margaret explains what's on her back:

"The tattoo of a peyote cactus on my upper back was done by Octeel at The Drawing Room in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the past few years I've taken part in a number of medicine ceremonies with a Lakota road woman, and it will probably sound really corny, but they completely changed my life. I'd been battling with severe anxiety and depression for a few years when I attended my first ceremony, and that ceremony was the turning point for me. Since then I've made huge strides with my emotional and spiritual self and credit ceremony for turning the trend I'd been on around. Octeel is a part of the group of people I'd met through ceremony, and it seemed only fitting to ask him to create this tattoo."

About the piece on her lower back, Margaret filled us in:

"The tattoo on my lower back was done almost 11 years ago at a studio in Pittsburgh called Z Spot, which has changed locations and owners since and is now called Alter Ego. I'm about 95% certain the woman who did the tattoo (which I designed) no longer works there. It was more of a 'yay, I'm 18 and can get a tattoo now!' sort of tattoo, but I still love it and am very glad I decided to get that first tattoo." 

Margaret also shared this photo of her thigh:

and she explains:

"This particular tattoo is ... by Terence Kauffman at Kink'd Ink Studio in Windber, PA. It started as a tribute to my poetry press, Hyacinth Girl Press, with the hyacinth at the bottom of the tattoo, and has grown into a whole garden, which will eventually extend up my ribcage. There are two lines of text hidden in the tattoo - in the stem of the hyacinth is the line 'Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else' which was written by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and on one of the leaves are the lines 'yes the pun's/the devil's work, but God made language/let him in' by the poet Niina Pollari. The lines are from a poem in her chapbook, Book Four, which I published in 2011. The flowers in the tattoo (daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, cornflower, lily of the valley, and poppy) are all flowers that my mother grew in her garden when I was growing up, and all the flowers I plan to add are in the same theme."

I am grateful for Margaret sending these photos and, accompanying them is this poem she sent, as well:

These are the small moments when you know you love

When the legs that tremble are not mine,
when I have not spoken in days,
when the last taste on my tongue
is the sour of coffee

the mountain opens its mouth and I step in.

See, these are the tunnels
you must hold your breath through,
these the traffic signals that will always
make you lift your hands from the wheel,
tell you to make another wish.

You are where I go when I think I know myself,
to remind me I never can,
that there is always a new scar
to discover at the back of my thigh,
always a new lust to draw
like a needle down my back.

I am full of torn up stamens,
petals chewed to pulp.

I watch your hands grey as the days pass,
I see your hands in the fire.
They snatch the hummingbird from it.\

I've rolled this sun,
these broken branch tips
into a ball to slip
beneath your mattress.
I will keep you awake at night,
coax out your royalty.

I know you want to be suspended in the air,
full of spells or something like them,
that you see a warm blanket as the first step
toward seduction, and a badly timed joke
as the second.

Maybe we all do the same things to each other -
cut our teeth on one another's scapula,
scrape at each other's signatures with a straight razor.

Swing your legs over the edge with me and you will feel the planet
as it tries to shrug you off,
the whiplash of elliptical orbit.

~ ~ ~

That lovely poem first appeared in Menacing Hedge (click through to hear Margaret reading the above poem, along with two others).

Margaret Bashaar's second chapbook, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel, was published by Blood Pudding Press in 2011. Her poetry has also appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, Menacing Hedge, and RHINO, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she edits Hyacinth Girl Press and collects antique typewriters, which may be haunted by ghosts or demons.

Thanks to Margaret for her contribution to this year's 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.

Lindsay's Grandfather Resonates in Her Tattoos

I met Lindsay in Penn Station back in August and she shared two tattoos, starting with this incredible blackbird inked on her thigh:

She credited this amazing piece to Grez at Kings Avenue Tattoo. He is one of those artists whose work I see occasionally in my travels. As always, I am impressed with his workmanship.

What does this tattoo symbolize? Lindsay explained, "I actually have the key as a necklace of mine that I found in my house and then the poppy is for my grandpa." And the blackbird? She told me, "I like the myths of death behind it."

Lindsay also has this tattoo on her arm:

Lindsay explains:

"This is my grandpa's suitcase and I actually found it with the key [from the op tattoo] and it was in the wall of my house. It was really awesome. It's like this really old style suitcase."

This is a great tribute to her grandfather and was also tattooed by Grez.

Thanks to Lindsay for sharing these awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Poppies for Poppy

These poppies are courtesy of Emma, who I met in Penn Station last week.

She got poppies because, she told me, "My grandfather passed away a couple years ago and I used to call him Poppy".

This is one her five tattoos, and represents about four and a half hours of work by Gus Espinoza at La Familia Tattoo, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Thanks to Emma for sharing "Poppy's Poppies" 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Laura White

Today's tattooed poet is Laura White, who was referred to us by the amazing Dorianne Laux. Dorianne is not inked, but, over the past three years, she has been invaluable as a resource for us, referring numerous tattooed poets to us who she knows in the poetry community, as well as several of her talented students, past and present.

So Laura sent us this photo which, if you ask me, is quite breathtaking:

Photo by Qlint Chesney, courtesy of Laura White

In it, you can see the extent to which she is tattooed, and she offered us this summary of several of her tattoos:

These tattoos were done by amazing Annie Frenzel, who used to be at Blue Flame Tattoo in Raleigh, N.C. but is now at Lowbrow Tattoo Parlour in Berlin, Germany. The bluebird on my shoulder was done about four years ago, and the half-sleeve finished up this past October. I was born and raised in Northeastern North Carolina, where the Eastern Bluebird is a common sight.

Detail of Photo by Qlint Chesney

Aside from being an absolutely beautiful, brilliantly blue and orange bird, they hold a special place in my heart because as a kid my grandparents had a nesting box behind their house. Together, we would keep an eye out on the little inhabitants, shooing away larger birds and guarding the nest from snakes and other predators. When my grandfather passed away about five years ago, I knew exactly how to grieve for him.

            The half-sleeve came later, and is a continuing tribute to the people and places that have made me who I am today.

Detail of Photo by Qlint Chesney

The three kinds of flowers are pink gerber daisies, red poppies, and orange tiger lilies, which my family and I always called cow lilies, because they grow wild in the pastures around our home. The gerber daisies are a personal favorite, because they are strikingly pretty, but in a spunky and fresh way. The poppies are a tribute to a trip I took to Turkey a few years back, in which I realized that the poppies that grow wild all over the Greek and Roman ruins are the same as the poppies that grow along the roadside in my own hometown. And the "cow" lilies, as suggested before, are a tribute to my parents and my childhood family. I remember a specific trip to my grandparents' house in which my dad pulled the car off on the side of the road, shooed us all out of the car, and helped us pick handfuls of lilies from the ditch by the road to take to our grandma.

            I'm far from finished with my body art  -- but maybe don't tell that to my mother. Something that I really hope to incorporate into these pieces one day is the last line of a Philip Larkin poem. It's from "An ArundelTomb," and I think it perfectly sums up not only my tattoo aesthetic, but my poetic one as well: "What will survive of us is love."

Laura also sent along this amazing poem:

My Man

I am a bundle 

of bruised attempts,

a pair of pursed lips,

ringed fingers trembling 

at the task again.

I bandage his fist,

all white gauze and 

wishes I would just 

be done already,

gather the broken glass 

of the curio cabinet, 

the specter of a sentence.      

I wear it like cracked  

concealer, his whiskey

hesitation, silent musing

which tends to bloom

violent in the evening.

Some nights

he just doesn't 

come home at all,

but goddamnit

how I love him.      

His mouth, 

a hot wash of pink

lilies struggling open,

the brown of a petal 

giving up.

His sun touch,

the frozen ground

absence of it.

His hands,            

wisteria when we

breathe together, when

my perfect words 

are his and

                        

Dear 

Dear

Dear       

Poetry

has to be

like this.  

  ~ ~ ~

Laura White is a Master's candidate in World Literature at North Carolina State University, and holds an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from the same institution. She's been writing since she could hold a crayon, and her first published poem appeared in a children's anthology when she was in fourth grade. Since then, though, she's taken an Emily Dickinson approach to poetry, and her work has only really appeared in the Windhover, NC State's Literary and Visual Magazine. One day, she'll have a book for you to buy. Promise.

Thanks so much to Laura for sharing her work, both tattooed and written. And thanks to Dorianne Laux for sending her my way. We here at Tattoosday appreciate it immensely!


This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

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.