Three Cool Tattoos from Andrea Laws, Tattooed Poet of the Week

Here at Tattoosday, we love to publish poems and tattoos from established poets, but we also like to recognize the work of up-and-coming writers from time to  time. It also helps when they have great tattoos.

Andrea Laws is one such poet. What she may be lacking in publication credits is more than compensated by her cool work, which is literary in and of itself.

Behold the first tattoo:

Andrea calls this her "Virginia Woolf Meets TOOL" tattoo, and credits Lance Tuck, at Skin Illustrations in Overland Park, Kansas.

She elaborates:

"[It's a] Virginia Woolf excerpt from her essay, A Street Haunting: A London Adventure, on my upper left arm.  The quote is, 'The shell-like covering, which our souls have excreted a shape distinct from others is broken and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. The traveler's secrets of her soul have been revealed.'  

The eye is based off the work of Alex Grey for the band TOOL, which is to represent my third eye opening.  I thought that this quote was an excellent portrayal of how much my soul grew from living in London for six months.  It was the scariest most amazing time of my life and I never wanted to forget what I accomplished there for myself, and that is why I got the tattoo."

Next is this piece on her back:

Andrea explains that this is an excerpt from Jim Morrison's "An American Prayer." It was also inked by Lance Tuck, but when he was at Big Daddy Cadillac's in Lawrence, Kansas.

Andrea explains:

"...Ever since the first time I heard The Doors, I immediately became a fan, and still to this day, they are my favorite band.  After listening to the music, I wanted to explore further into the writing of The Doors and picked up a book of poetry by Jim Morrison.  Most women fell in love with his looks, I fell in love with his writing.  The picture I'm submitting was taken at Jim Morrison's grave in Paris, which was always my dream after getting the tattoo.  The tattoo quote is the following:

Do you know the warm progress                                under the stars?Do you know we exist?Have you forgotten the keys           to the Kingdom?Have you been borne yet                                   & are you alive?Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths                                                   of the agesCelebrate symbols from deep elder forests[Have you forgotten the lessons                                               of ancient war]"

As a fan of the Doors, and Jim Morrison as well, I appreciate this tattoo immensely.

Finally, she shared this piece:

This amazing Edgar Allan Poe portrait, on Andrea's right forearm, was done by Sean Harty, another artist at Skin Illustrations.

Andrea tells us:

"Poe was one of the first major poets that was introduced to me when I was 10-years-old by my late Grandmother.  I fell in love with his work and have always been inspired by his tales of darkness and mystery.  The quote around Edgar is a dedication that I wrote for him, 'Forevermore, nevermore.  The dark prince who gave birth to the black sheets over my eyes.'  Eventually, I will be getting Mary Shelley's portrait on my left forearm, so they will become my locket of writers who inspired me to write."

Andrea also sent us the following poem, "Flies and Spiders":

Flies and Spiders

threaded fingertips attach to souls
eating wings bent by crowing
consciousness in empty bowls
excusing pain for a world knowing

prey dribbles down separated cheeks
rules of nature feeds without honor
innocent fuel injected into freaks
defined by dark smiles of conquer

memories disobey fantasies
Christ figures freeing the will to kill
bearing bouquets of drab families
tied with bloody strings for the ill

third eyes plucked for a strange beginning
tyrannical and villainous beliefs
Big Brother always in the winning
preaching censored versions of real thieves

codes now trapped in mirrors of weakness
creeping wanderers behind dire doors
melody sounds and timbre bleakness
arranging new constellation stores

suspend the iron cauldrons watching
past times upon and past times ago
loud failure claiming perfect timing
as darkness dances we needn't grow

~ ~ ~

Andrea adds a little explanation to this work:

"I've been working on this poem for a few years now, and believe I finally have it in its final draft. I think it best represents my fear and discouragement of a non-free world intertwined with dark images. I was obviously reading V for Vendetta and listening to a lot of Bill Hicks stand-up comedy when I started writing this poem."

Andrea Laws currently works as a Documentation Specialist at the KU Endowment, writing policies and procedures for the Gift Processing and Information Services Departments. She graduated from KU, in 2008, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Theatre & Film. After college, she moved to Great Britain on a six-month work visa, and lived and worked in London, from September, 2008 - February, 2009. She has been writing poetry since she can remember and frequently updates her blog with new work at www.beetlebattlejourney.blogspot.com.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Michael Costello

I met Michael Costello back in February 2014 at Poet's House in New York City at the launch reading for The Incredible Sestina Anthology.

I spotted his tattoo in the lobby after the reading, we got to talking, and here we are, a year later, with the penultimate post for the 2015 Tattooed Poets Project.

Check it out:

This is a complete poem by e.e. cummings: "seeker of truth//follow no path/all paths lead where//truth is here."

Michael tells us:

"I spent years marred by ambivalence about what to get inked.

How does one ultimately decide?

As a child, 5 years old or so, all the way through to my college years, I remember my mother would recite various poetic fragments. Often it was something by e.e. cummings. These recitations became part of my internal dialogue, part of who I am. This one, above all, resonated with me. I had the tattoo done when I was 31 or so.

I worked with a tattoo artist in Saratoga Springs, NY. This was 6 or 7 years ago. I remember his name was Matt. Instead of using cummings' distinctive lower case typewriter font, I wanted to choose something that captured the essence of the poem. Serendipitously, Matt was working on an original font. And that's what this is."

Michael graciously sent us a trio of poems:

Thoughts of a Young Gizmo

I.

It is such a beautiful dead center

I

just had to write you

a printed communication

from the town meeting

and to show

that I’m not marked

by extreme

excitement

confusion

or agitation

I only slipped

on a liquid containing

a substance suspended

in the giant feeling of loneliness

and drowned in the “Baton Rouge”

of human activity or interest

you were too good to demand

or require

Thoughts of a Young Gizmo

II.

I gain passage despite obstacles

in the late afternoon

and the smoke detector still

occupies itself with amusement

about the burning of Li Po

as it has for hundreds of years

she always grasps with clarity

and certainty

how to be completely democratic

O my daybreak

my you

who is in possession

of my complete affections

daylong daughter of a monarch

may you not be

extending a period of time

on the course used in going

from one place

to another

Obituary Song

During hapless hours, she listens

to his rattling coffer.

He’s been a living inside

this coffin for years.

For far too many times

‘round the clock now

he’s sat with his sentiment

at the bar, like a portrait by old Rembrandt;

but oh, bottle-side, she’s got a smile

that's kept him hangin' on.

On ashen days she's made

his oxidized heart glisten

‘cause she's got a voice

could make a song out of the obituary section.

"Is it a better life, to be a tramp

or just get trampled on?"

"Is it a better truth or lie

that life only ends when you die?"

On coal-colored days she's made

his dull heart glisten

and in the ambulance now he hears her,

singin’ his name out, like a siren.

~ ~ ~

Michael Costello was born in Buffalo in 1976 and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Since then he has published in numerous print and online journals, including The Del Sol Review, MiPo, eye-rhyme, The Columbia Poetry Review, La Petite Zine, Tarpaulin Sky, and Essays & Fictions; he was also included in The Best American Poetry 2004, and in The Incredible Sestina Anthology. Currently, Michael lives and works in Cambridge, MA.

Clicking the links in the bio above will magically transport you to more of Michael's poetry.

Thanks to Michael Costello for sharing his tattoo and poems with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poems 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: Jessica Melilli-Hand

Our next tattooed poet is Jessica Melilli-Hand, who submitted the following photo:

This tattoo reads, "This being human is a guest house/Be grateful for whoever comes."

Jessica elaborates:

"My tattoo features an excerpt from the beginning and (almost) end of The Guest House [by] Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. The text surrounds an image of a Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly. I chose the text and the image for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I had the tattoo done at 13 Roses in East Atlanta Village (I forget the name of the artist, but he was wonderful and worked from a photograph of the butterfly, and I used to live in EAV) on April 27, 2013, one year after my father suddenly had a grand mal seizure (with no seizure history). He died five difficult months later from a glioblastoma (brain cancer, which caused the seizure). The butterfly in general is a symbol of transformations, of course, and I had always loved finding butterflies with my father, especially the gorgeous blue Pipevine Swallowtail, which is native to Georgia (as am I). 

The text also speaks of transformations and is a reminder to be grateful for *all* life brings (the end of the poem continues 'because each has been sent / as a guide from beyond'). The text was already incredibly important to me for coping with CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome), a debilitating chronic pain condition (we're talking wind blowing feels like fire) I developed after an electrical injury in 2003. In fact, I lost the ability to physically write, but I learned to use a voice program in order to keep writing my poetry (which had the interesting and even helpful effect of tuning me more into the sound/music). I memorized the Rumi poem, which I already loved, at the suggestion of one of my beloveds (Rumi, of course, often refers to the Beloved), and I repeat it often, in wonderful and in difficult times. 

This past summer, the poem helped me through after they drilled into my spine and cut skin away from muscle as I had an intrathecal pump implanted (basically a hockey-puck-like chunk of titanium in my abdomen filled with Prialt, medication derived from synthetic sea snail venom, that gets pumped into my spinal fluid). This medication is both amazing and insane, and as we continue to search for my perfect dose, I have lost and regained the ability to walk, and sound/light/movement are all pain-inducing and nauseating, among other crazy side effects, but the CRPS is more well-controlled than ever before. 

Again, this tattoo as well as the poem and ideas about transformation it evokes keep helping me through. I call upon the poem in times of joy as well, such as when I finally legally (at the federal level – still fighting for it in Georgia) wed my talented and beautiful wife in San Francisco in the summer of 2013. I'm quite happy with the tattoo (the color and shading of the butterfly is particularly stunning), which is a good thing, as I can't get any more. My CRPS was originally in my right arm and hadn't spread beyond it in over ten years, but three months after getting the tattoo, it spread to my left leg (where the tattoo is). Three months is quite awhile so it could be coincidental, as CRPS often eventually spreads on its own, but I found out later that tattoos could possibly cause spreading, so we have to play it safe. Since I can only be inked once, I'm glad I started with Rumi."

Jessica sent us two poems and, rather than choose between them, we are sharing both because one is
"a poem related to the situation with [her] father" and the other has to do with her CRPS. Jessica notes that "both have to do with the tattoo."

Love Song for My Father's Broken Teeth

Knocked-out boxer I can't help loving,

your face snarled beyond recognition

when Death seized your body,

the Grand Mal bang-bang-bang

knocking your head on the cracked-open door

to your dead mother's new heavenly home,

but you, stubborn man, wouldn’t go.

A wail broke open the night, woke us all

in our separate houses while your face swelled,

while your throat closed around jagged teeth,

but you wouldn't go, hawked each stuck piece out

for the medics to collect and later place by your bedside,

after they shoved the breath back into you,

after we gathered and prayed

or pretended to pray, after Mom cried Satan,

you slay me, and still I praise.

The first time your eyes opened,

the blue serpent was still hissing breath

down your throat. You grabbed and yanked

with a strength that surprised them, those stoic men,

until they had to strap your wrists to the bedrail.

Language scattered out of you: generation, generate,

need, Goddamnit, please. The doctors called this word-salad,

and as you slammed the restraints until they opened,

as an anarchy of nouns and verbs rioted past your broken teeth,

I know you tried to say death can’t hold me.

Dear difficult man who made and named me,

when your brain remembered which words you needed,

how to line them up and let them out, you looked, bewildered,

into my eyes, who are you?

                My name fell out of my body,

was buried without ceremony, without last words.

Because there was nothing else I could do,

I sang for you, for my name, for the tired nurses,

for the tantrum your brain had become,

and then you said it, Jessica, you said, Jessica.

I know, now, what it is to be reborn, to return

to first words: yes, Daddy, Jessica.

I couldn’t carry you back with me, though.

A tumor, the doctors said, cancer

they said, stage four, so I prayed

to them, but when they opened your skull

and saw the wrinkled face of God,

they couldn’t untangle Death

from your left temporal lobe,

from language, from our faces.

Some days you remember my name,

and some days neither of us can be sure.

You tell me your brain has made you

into four different people, now.

If I can close the eyes of my grief,

for a moment, I can see

a sort of beauty in this

becoming more

before you go.

Pain Jane

(originally published in Reunion: The Dallas Review, no.1, 2011)

Once, Jane's body was not

coals and flames. Once, Jane touched something

she should not.

          A fire-wire.

                That's when her synapses surged

             and crackled. That's when

she plugged in her spinal cord, when

brush fires first popped

                from her footsteps.

            Stop it,

Jane said, her parents said, the preacher said, stop it.

    The doctor said, it won't. It won't,

                           the doctor said.

The doctor roasted a marshmallow. A joke,

the doctor said. You will want to die,

                       but don't,

        said her friends. Lie back,

we'll have a barbecue. Jane's brain began to think

the way fire thinks. Jane wanted

to lick everyone.

    The state of California banned her,

even when she got a water wife. She was an act of God.

    Men flipped down masks, calculated

her heat input, welded things

together. Jane tried to keep

            her sparks to herself,

but her friends' arm hairs kept singeing

        into burnt hair smell.

Health Insurance said talk to Fire Insurance.

Fire Insurance said talk to Health Insurance.

All the ears closed  

fire-proof doors.

    Stay home, the doctor said, but Jane would not

stay home. Now

           that she was an eternal flame,

she had to go to the graves, had to

be the light lighting the path

between the breathing, the stopped.

~ ~ ~

Jessica Melilli-Hand is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain and is published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Barrow Street, and The Minnesota Review, among others. She won first place in the Agnes Scott Poetry Competition in 2014, judged by Terrance Hayes, in 2011, judged by Arda Collins, and in 2008, judged by Martín Espada.

Thanks to Jessica for sharing her tattoo and poems with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poems 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 Welcomes Back Izzy Oneiric

Izzy Oneiric first appeared on The Tattooed Poets Project three years ago in this post. The piece she shared is phenomenal, and her post was re-tweeted by Neil Gaiman, upon whose work the tattoo was based. It remains one of the most-viewed Tattoosday posts in our eight-year history.That said, when Izzy emailed me earlier this year about submitting some new work, I was definitely excited to see what she was sharing. I was not disappointed. Check it out:

Here's a different perspective:

Izzy calls this her "Flowering Outerspace Kudzu with Alien Burroughs Quote". She elaborates:

"The tattoo on my chest celebrates the life and spirit of Nathan Breitling, a dear friend and fellow poet. We met in the Poetry MFA program at Columbia College Chicago in 2009 and remained close until his sudden death last May. Everyone who knew him was devastated. He was a wonderful person and a promising poet. He was a light. Sometimes a black light and sometimes a strobe light, but always a light. Nate's family established a poetry fellowship in his honor. His friends at Phantom Limb Press created the Breitling Open Chapbook Prize. I got a tattoo. I knew any tattoo for him had to be strange and bright. I also knew it had to be visible, so I could tell people about him when they asked.

Nate's poem 'Flowering Kudzu' encompasses so much of what I love about him and his work. He wasn't afraid to experiment. He wasn't afraid to take risks, embrace the unknown and laugh about it. 'Let's just hope this works, because I've never tried it before.' The result was always weird and beautiful. I don't use those words lightly.

Shortly after watching 'Flowering Kudzu' again, I stumbled on the Burroughs quote 'Language is a virus from outer space.' Whenever I encounter Burroughs now, I associate it with Nate, and it was just natural to connect language and kudzu as invasive aliens . . . it was actually more of a collision than a connection, and that was when the piece really coalesced. I suspected Shawn Dubin at Idle Hands was the right artist for it; confirmed after I messaged him Hey. I want a tattoo of flowering kudzu from outer space incorporated with a Burroughs quote in an alien script. It's a memorial piece for a friend. There's also serious cover work involved. What do you think? and he replied. Sure, send some pics and I'll start sketching.

I chose 'Alienese 1' from Futurama for the lettering because it's stylistically compatible with the kudzu, and I thought Nate might appreciate the irony of an alien virus transmitted via cartoon. Shawn spent hours on the design, and it took two sessions (about seven hours) of actual tattooing, not including stenciling and placement, because it also had to cover three crappy tattoos I thought were bad-ass when I was 18. Shawn was awesome the entire time, which was rough in a few places. The sternum--bony slab that shields the heart—was sore and raw after several hours. I cried--more than once. But the result was worth it. Weird. And beautiful. Like Nate".

Izzy Oneiric is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in bacon. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Raging Pelican, Source Material, South Loop Review and Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants. Her chapbook From the Bombshell Shelter was selected as Main Street Rag's Author's Choice. She currently performs with the New Orleans Poetry Brothel and is working on her third manuscript, a collage of texts published before 1940, an excerpt of which appears below.

Reunited, but Only for One is That Tragic

Two arms can openly nail the heart.

There is space provided for you here. There is a splendid panoramic view. In order to precipitate the tragedy, a gold disc by the sun, more powerful than love, will fill the whole boat and crush us like lizards.
To sink the boat.

In the picture of my thought, the freshness of the dizzying water, a fetid seagull released whipping black rocks. Most sweet consolation.

Discovered in the pocket of my jacket:

A narrow pestle.
A leather God.
Fourteen stories.
A bubbling rose.

~ ~ ~

Thanks to Izzy for coming back to us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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: Aimee Herman

Last summer at the NYC poetry Festival, I met Aimee Herman, after spotting her tattoo:

This reads "when silence creates pattern/remove the middle/and engrave/the opposite."

Aimee later explained:

"Out of the nine tattoos on my body, this is the only one whose words are mine. It comes from a poem in my second book of poetry, meant to wakeup feeling. (great weather for MEDIA). I’ve had many people see this and ask what it means. I never grow tired of the question, because I find my answer always changes. For the most part it means to carve out the quiet in silence, which tends to become a pattern in existence. Wanting to speak OUT our silence until the fear stops us. So, this is a reminder to untwist the repetition of silence and by engraving the opposite, one is encouraged to speak out and up. I do this everyday with my poetry. I speak out of silence and away from its cage. I like this inked reminder on my body because I’ve existed inside so many variations of myself that felt haunted by silence. Fear of being shamed. Fear of breathing life into my scars. But this tattoo empowers me. It reminds me why I write."

The following poem comes from her book meant to wake up feeling:

postulation

(

For cause of disturbance to bottom half of body, see page 143.

(enter mop, bucket and thunder)

Blood clot, 9

Gender peculiarities, 32

Suffocation through trauma, 12,

16, 17, 19, 24, 25, 27-

lesion’d sidewalks, disembowel’d filth, medicine'd memory, call them migrating flesh furnaces,  photograph'd bandages, remarks of sadness, shape for hunters, syringes of churned implants, unknown neck glass, wooden nude

despise loneliness/ flush refuge/ neuter. wounds.  119

"She is getting softer. Locate the alteration of

weather fumes. Are her feet wet. Does she have

a plan of entry. If she is olive-skinned, allow the

sun to arrive like a heated erection pressing pres-

sing pressing."

laziness of cartilage, 2,731

(admit a need for naming labeling absorption )

label:

That is anise. That is not meant to go away. That is a man

in the shape of a woman. That is a grapefruit. That is addiction.

That is a chin ignoring the rest. That is concrete. That is flimsy

and forever. That is a meal standing up. That is starvation.

That is a hurricane. That is bondage. That is clever. That

is intrusion of turnpikes and demolition. That is sexy.

That is the smell of cryophobia. That is a disrobing of blurs.

That is rust.

demand:

"You didn't even notice I scratched away my

hips and climbed skin out of my collarbone so you can hang there. Aren't you homeless. Don't you want to burrow your germs into my gender to see what mutated cells we can create?"

count teeth, 309

explore the function of magic, 241

impose queerness into wrists/earlobes/

back pockets, 64, 919

[ stage right /spotlight on the white space / the stiffness / enter  mammals]  

Person 1: (hopeful)  You can weave monsters into quilts for the wintertime.

Person 2: (disinterested)  What stitch do you primarily use?

Person 1: (with knowledge of rage)  The kind that pricks both of you.

(the understudy screams)

speak up, reproduction!

psychoanalyze how much you mishandle prisons

use    organic    cocks    only

compulsive transformations miss out on blemished whiskers

want we want what we want want half-moments because we cannot afford completeness   only red ugh red ugh

how much has been erased and if you steam open the body will you find what was really there

pound tiny scars into cumin, 880

violence the tongues, 17 18

fibrillate, 47

open indentations like flip books, 11, 753

write outside of prosthetics, 32, 34-

    

see.

          [

Blood and ailments in high school. New Jersey: 1990-. Action.

Desire chemical removal. Boulder: 2008. Memory.

Gulped dance relapse or the time I drank tea from shoveled belly button, Hartford: 2005. Memory.

Inflation of womb, worry and wind gulp. New York: ____. Memory.

Play hopscotch with inferior nasal concha and sacrum.  ____ : Memory. _.

Spill homes. ___: ___. Memory.

Staircase. Emptied throat cavity. New Jersey, 1991. Memory.

Herman, Aimee. to go without blinking. BlazeVOX books. New York: 2012.

~ ~ ~ 

Aimee Herman is a Brooklyn-based poet and performance artist looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body. Find Aimee's poems in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (NightboatBooks), in the full-length collection, to go without blinking (BlazeVOX books), the recent chapbook, rooted, (Dancing Girl Press), and in the full-length book of poems, meant to wake up feeling (great weather for MEDIA). Aimee is an adjunct professor at Bronx Community College, a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC and a host for The Inspired Word’s open mic erotica series, Titillating Tongues. Read more at: aimeeherman.wordpress.com.

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

This entry is ©2015 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: Christiaan Sabatelli

Our next poet with tattoos is Christiaan Sabatelli. Check out this literary ink:

This is one of Christiaan's six tattoos and features four lines by Robert Frost from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening":

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep, 
And miles to go before I sleep.

Christiaan elaborates on why he chose this poetic tattoo:

"There is something about the refrain in the final two lines of this poem that have always spoken to me. Throughout the poem, Frost is clearly struggling with the idea of giving up, which is something I too struggle with often. However, the end of the poem is an obvious attempt to counteract that impulse. If there were only a single line, without the repetition, it might not seem so. But the by saying the line twice, it is almost as if Frost is talking himself into believing in something more, as if he is convincing himself to carry on. It is in this active impulse that I feel most drawn in. The struggle to not give in is one that needs to be actively fought. And so, I wanted to have the stanza on me, as a constant reminder of that struggle."

He had this done by Tania at Metamorphosis Tattoo in Kingston, New York.

Christiaan sent us this poem:

A note to my son

A ball of paper, you were taken from
the pocket of your mother, a suddenly
scribbled note, the number of someone
forgotten and never called, the remnants
of a poem in pants just washed. Pulpy hair
pressed into the watermark of eyes so new
to the light, your damp spine curled round like stone,
stalling air spilled in across your tongue.
I watched as you were unballed, as they pulled
crumpled knees out from your chest, unfolded
elbows into arms, stretching your body
carefully out, exposed skin still oddly
blank of years, and with still damp hands put
my arms around your pages unfolded.

~ ~ ~

Christiaan Sabatelli holds an MFA, in poetry, from the University of Florida. While at UF I had the pleasure of working with Michael Hoffman, and completed my thesis under the guidance of William Logan. He has been published in a number of national American magazines, including Writer’s Journal, A Gathering of Tribes, Revelry, New Collage, and Time of Singing.

Thanks to Christiaan for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.