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.

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