The Tattooed Poets Project: Su Zi

Our next tattooed poet is Su Zi.

As you can see, she has a few tattoos.

Of her body art, she selected this piece to share:

Su Zi explains:

"I am sending ... a fuller portrait, and ... the tattoo on my knee ... holding a cup and saucer with the same motif. I chose this tattoo because it is the only china pattern I like. I was given this set of china by my grandmother, with whom I felt close. I liked the pattern for its mystical whimsy, and tried to keep my set intact through a tempestuous life. I also miss my Grandmother. In the winter of 2012, I had Liz Gruesome tattoo the pattern on my knee at the Marked For Life convention (generally, all women artists), to which I have been a faithful attendee since its inception. I chose my knee, because that's where I habitually set my cup when I am trying to be proper in company -- as I was taught, you know? I like the idea of the pattern on the cup being repeated on my knee--or vice versa. It was not the most painless choice I could make, but that's part of the totem--yes?"

Incidentally, Liz Gruesome works out of Smokin' Guns Tattoo in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Su Zi sent us a poem to accompany the tattoo. Entitled "Three Days," she likes "the synchronicity of the Gramma tattoo and the poem ... a sort of matrilineal theme to it all, and death and loss and all that."

                                                  Three Days

1 Hallows

The Frankenstorm has put frost on the blades of Florida

     and there are angry dishes in the kitchen

     of this house that you touched briefly so long ago.

The tree you planted is full, vigorous and larger than expected.

Your tears in the water are a chemistry beyond your degree.

There’s a full moon that is livid in the northeast

     and a pink candle in the window to the north,

     because you have aged past

     Jack O Lanterns

     and my children have fur.

You would be eighty one today

     and my costume is your habit: jeans, flannel, thick boots,

      preoccupied scowl.

Of your many gifts, I have your eyebrows

     your soup recipe ---

Oh how I would invoke

     your lullaby or your laugh.

2 Saints

The flesh of the earth yields,

     turning between small, square palms.

It is the day for dice and the washing of graves,

So the last feathers of the late storm

     make a thousand thousand perfect circles at 3pm

     to the gratitude of the grass, which glows,

     to the glory of the names facing skyward.

Here is our oval, rising into shapes

     veils of evaporation

     urns of clay

The full moon later

       with Jupiter on her shoulder

3 Souls

In the blue of the morning,

      while the oldest oak still dreams of night’s mists,

The moon pales west past fallows and pastures

      dew spangled cobwebs,

      tiny skittering birds

My hands speak all day of grain and reins,

    keypads, of a bruise,

       of the definitive slant of light,

       of these moments without memory

Yet my attire is your lesson:

       big sweaters, careless hair,

       bare face, blue jeans

       my meal is dinner, because

       that’s what you taught,

       and there’s the purchased plate of fried shrimp.

In fact, the chocolate phosphate of your Depression Era soda-fountain childhood

       is now an unspoken institution at the dam diner: a legacy

       to those who never knew you.

There’s no one to see

       your echo in my face

       the jokes made only we would find funny.

We are women who look down when we walk,

       and now today walking

   There were all those we took

      so the conversation continues

       your word

       my honor

   all the internal, reflexive anachronisms.

It was on this very porch

    we decided

    how it would be

     when that phone call came

I said “can you make it so”

And you said “I can do that”

Thus, it was

    (and it was strength to hold fast when unknown voices

    counseled otherwise, but

    you were wise “ignore them”

     thus, it was)

Okay, maybe I am an odd girl

I am your girl

     ending three days homage birthday

     with this memento mori

     of that one morning

   I called you, your voice a single guttural wheeze

   As the Parkinson’s froze your throat

   and I said “I just called to listen to your life”

For a minute I heard your room through the telephone

      until your lost grasp.

A few mornings later, it was 10:35, the nurse answered,

     Unwilling to leave your couch and TV, gave breezy syllables

But it was then

           just then

           your final stillness

Yet I felt you for hours.

At 4pm there was a wind of relief

       full sails of joy

I felt you blossom

     into the physics without formula.

Now this gibbous moon rides forty degrees into her ascent

     and the crickets are the symphony of summer age seven

     nothing will be as crisp as those new cotton pajamas

     after a post-sunburn bath

And if our bodies remember

    all the ways

   then this is one of your many

Thus, it is

    square hands never resting,

    opening not to ashes, but

    to midnight,

     the creeping chill

 An awaited whisper that I

      know is yours

  ~ ~ ~

Su Zi has published poems in New American Writing, Exquisite Corpse ("when it was a print zine and somewhere after it went online"), New Laurel Review, the now-defunct Mesachabe, and in an anthology called Cadence of Hooves. She has published stories and articles (in print, a while back, in Natural Horse and, online, at Gypsy Art and Cosmoetica). SuZi is also an artist, and some of her work is visible in her etsy shop here (www.etsy.com/shop/suzi00). She also publishes a chapbook series disguised as a magazine, that's really artist-made books--hand printed covers, hand sewn bindings-- that has its own Facebook page: Red Mare magazine. She invites readers to subscribe.

Thanks to Su Zi for her contribution to this year's Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

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