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.

Tara Betts Shines with a Lucille Clifton Tattoo (The Tattooed Poets Project)

I first reached out to poet Tara Betts in January 2014, when she was un-inked. A few months later, she was taking pictures of tattooed poets at AWP, and sending them my way. Michael Mlekoday, one of those poets, appeared earlier this month here.

But, lo and behold, between last year's AWP and this year's installment of the Tattooed Poets Project, Tara went and got her first tattoo! And she went for big and spectacular! 

Tara went to Christian James at Speakeasy Tattoo Parlor in Chicago (Christian's Instagram is http://instagram.com/cjameswise) and got an entire poem by the late, great Lucille Clifton inscribed on her arm. Check it out: 

Photo by Lional Freeman

And here is the healed, legible poem:

This is "won't you celebrate with me," one of Clifton's best-loved poems.

Tara told me:

"I chose Ms. Clifton's 'won't you celebrate with me' because she was one of my first poetry teachers, and this poem reminds me of how some days let you know that ensuring your existence is an act of resistance. I told her daughter Alexia that I would get this tattoo, and I am glad that I did. This poem is an affirmation for me."

I first remember hearing Lucille Clifton read this poem on Bill Moyers' Language of Life special in the 1990s. I had the pleasure of hearing her read it on one occasion at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival in the last decade. I still get chills when I hear this poem.

 

Listen to Ms. Clifton reading it below:

Tara sent us the following poem, "Ink on the Sheets," from her new manuscript "Break the Habit:"

Ink on the Sheets

Forgetting to click the cap over a pen’s tip so close

to your sheets always creates a moment of regret.

After your divorce you get rid of all the bedding

you shared—pillows, fitted and flat sheets, pillow

cases, comforters.  They felt like trying to sleep

on a hardened pea.  You bought pink and burgundy

sheets flush with curlicues of white and pink leaves. 

A mint green comforter with chocolate brown swirls

like antique metal work and trim.  Each chosen

for comfort yet practical for sweat and tangling.

Emissions that you avoid are not sticky, white fertility

bent on a biological race. You avoid wasted fecundity

that seeps from tip into a ruthless pooling of black

that could have curled into words across pages.  Dark

soaks through sheets, pillows, mattress cover, spots

the mattress. It is a harbinger of words waiting, it is

a reminder of you with words only,

on a bed frame, springs, and cotton.

~ ~ ~ 

Tara Betts is the author of Arc & Hue and the chapbook/libretto THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali. Tara received her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing at Binghamton University. Her poems has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including POETRY, Ninth Letter, Crab Orchard Review, Gathering Ground, Bum Rush the Page, Villanelles, both Spoken Word Revolution anthologies, The BreakBeat Poets, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, and GHOST FISHING: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology . She recently completed the manuscript for her second poetry collection "Break the Habit" and is working on other projects.

Thanks to Tara Betts for her amazing contribution and all the support she has lent Tattoosday and the Tattooed Poets Project over the last two years!

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: Brianna Pike

Our next tattooed poet is Brianna Pike, who sent this photo of her tattoo:

Brianna explained:

"I've wanted a tattoo for sometime, so last year for my 33rd birthday, I decided to take the plunge. I got my tattoo done at Metamorphosis [by artist Matt Carrel] in Indianapolis, which is where I currently live. The quote, 'Love is feathered like a bird,' is from an Elizabeth Bishop poem Three Valentines. Elizabeth Bishop is my touchstone poet. She's the first poet I read (as a student) who really resonated with me and she's the reason I wanted to be a poet. I return to her work again and again and I share her poetry with my creative writing classes every semester. The quote is also important to me because my family has always been fascinated by song birds. I have countless memories of listening to my grandmother talk about the birds that came to her feeders, of my mother going out in three feet of snow to feed the birds in the dead of winter, and of my uncle making birdhouses out of birch bark. There are five birds: one for my husband, one for my sister, one for my parents, one for my grandparents and one for my aunt. I plan to add another small bird when my son is born in June."

Brianna sent us this poem, which first appeared in New Plans Review, Fall 2013:

Starling

For Roger and Beth Young

This morning I shot a starling straight from the sky.

The shiny, black bastard drove the sparrows and wrens

from your carefully kept feeders, then strutted

about the branches of our old apple tree.

You do not approve, Beth. Your gentle soul gives grace

to all creatures, even your sisters who just arrived.

You are pouring tea as I walk around the front of our house,

shotgun resting over my right shoulder.

Three sisters swoop down on your small

frame, pulling at your arms, pressing against your back.

Their cackling disrupts our quiet home, dark

eyes move over our stone floors,

pine paneled walls, and the small, cast iron stove

smoking away in the corner. You look away,

your eyes light, but your mouth a thin, rigid

line slicing your face in two.

As the youngest you bear their burden, the blame

for lost children and broken husbands. With each passing

summer they move farther from you,

carrying their judgment in packed bags,

buried beneath silk stockings and picture frames.

Their misery will grow like your carefully tended

lilies, and you, my love, will suffer.

But for now, you will serve sweet tea and yellow

cake. You will forgive, slip me a quick smile as

all four of you come round back, talking peonies,

and oriental poppies, just in time to watch me

string the starling up high, a warning

to his flock. As I descend from our tree,

three sets of eyes meet mine, uncertain

in the harsh summer sun. They move to bird’s

broken black body, swaying.

My warning is also clear.

~ ~ ~

Brianna Pike is an Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She received her MA from the University of North Texas and her MFA from Murray State University. Her poems have appeared in Glassworks, Gravel, Heron Tree, and Mojave River Review among others. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband. She blogs at https://briannajaepike.wordpress.com/.

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

Lexy’s Chrysanthemum Sprouts from a Poem

I was leaving my office building last week on Broad Street, when a woman named Lexy walked by with this great thigh tattoo:

I caught up to her, introduced myself and she agreed to share her ink with us here.

This piece was done by Alejandro Lopez, who is based in Pasadena, California, but works out of Addiction NYC when he's in the Big Apple.

When I asked her if she originally went to Alejandro for the chrysanthemum, she said that actually, she
had gone to him for this tattoo on her ribs:

“This is a poem,” she explained, “and I told [Alejandro] the meaning of the poem, and he reached out
to me and said, You know, I really like the poem, it resonated with me and he asked if he could expand
on it … And we sat down and talked about what the meaning was for me and he created this piece [the
chrysanthemum] based on what it meant to me.”

She indicated that the poem is Korean in origin, and it is in her grandmother’s handwriting. It turns
out that Lexy’s grandma was a professional calligrapher in Korea, and the red boxes are actual
representations of her grandparent’s pen names, or signatures, in Korean. How cool is that?

She elaborated a little more on the meaning of the poem:

“The poem itself is talking about whether you live or die as a nameless wildflower or a famous rose, it’s up to you, so you basically take control of your destiny, but [should] also have compassion for those who have no control … it also says something about the day that you’re born is the day that you die.”

Lexy also told me she was born in the year of the snake, which is why she has a cobra tattoo. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I didn't see a snake here.

When I was writing up this post, however, and looked at Alejandro's Instagram page, it all made sense. After getting his permission, along with Lexy's, I am happy to share the whole work-in-progress which, for obvious reasons, I never saw on Broad Street:

Photo Courtesy of Alejandro P. Lopez via http://instagram.com/alejandropaivalopez

Thanks to Lexy for sharing her wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! Thanks, as well, to Alejandro Lopez for sharing his Instagram collage so we could see his work in its full scope.

This entry is ©2014 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Catherine Bresner

Our next Tattooed Poet o' the Week is Catherine Bresner.

She sent us photos of two of her tattoos, starting with this literary ink:

The line that marches across Catherine's collarbone and around her shoulder is "mi corazón se cierra como una flor nocturna."

Catherine explains,

"My first tattoo is on my collarbone and is a line from one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda. It is from his poem 'I Have Gone Marking', which is in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The translation is 'My heart closes like a nocturnal flower'. I grew up near the ocean and in this way I suppose I have always felt a sort of kinship with Neruda. We both draw inspiration from the sea."

She also shared this one:

Catherine explains:

"My second tattoo is on my upper arm, and it is part of Aubrey Beardsley's illustration entitled "The Peacock Skirt" (1893).

Aubrey Beardsley was an Art Nouveau artist and author. This is the image that Oscar Wilde used to promote his tragedy Salome, and it depicts the Syrian Captain of the Guard who casts his gaze on Salome.

I am haunted by Beardsley's artwork, and by this picture in particular, because it is seductive and sinister. I also loved the story behind its origination, as Beardsley and Wilde often collaborated together in order to create their art.

Both tattoos were done by the very talented Tim Brewer, who owns a tattoo shop in Hadley, Massachusetts called Blueprint Gallery."

Catherine was also kind enough to share the following unpublished poem:

LACUNA


The ivy presses against the window pane as if this room were the sun—as if this was the center
of everything, here, among the tables and books. The pillars are endless, their flirtations growing
like ivy from beneath floorboards; they nuzzle the skylight panes.

(Outside: the bird caw and the daisy’s slow decay.)

Everything is sinuous and coy, each wallpaper detail like a belly dancer, exotic and surprising.
Each lampshade, a crocus. Walls are not walls here.
In the orange light of a sunset, the cherry wood glows like the first ember in a forest fire.
This room gives off its own light.

Outside, the wind pulls at the last patch of grass until it turns tawny and brittle. The sun is a gas
lamp dimming out.

~ ~ ~

Catherine Bresner is the author of the chapbook The Merriam Webster Series. She was the editorial assistant of Pilot Books, an intern for The Massachusetts Review, and a participant of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Her poetry has been published in The Pinch, H_NGM_N, and Burntdistrict and has poetry forthcoming in The Cream City Review and Yemassee, where she was a finalist for the Pocataligo Poetry Contest. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at The University of Washington, Seattle, where she is the associate editor for The Seattle Review and an intern at Wave Books.

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

This entry is ©2014 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: Leigh Ann Hornfeldt

Our next tattooed poet is Leigh Ann Hornfeldt, who sent us two tattoos. First, this Northern mockingbird:

Leigh Ann explains:

"I chose this tattoo as I was writing my first collection of poems, East Main Aviary. During this time I became very interested in birding. I can remember the first mockingbird I ever saw: He was walking the rail of our wooden deck during a light rain. From that point on it seemed like mockingbirds were everywhere for me, with one even following me around the inside of a home improvement store. I believe in animal guides and mockingbirds remind me of the power of my voice, to protect my nest, and to always be brave. This tattoo was done by a dear friend, Kevin Hamilton of Bleed Blue Tattoo [in Lexington, Kentucky]."

Her second tattoo was part of the Lexington Tattoo Project, which was referenced in yesterday's post from Bianca Spriggs.

Leigh Ann elaborates:

"This tattoo was part of The Lexington Tattoo Project by Kremena Todorova & Kurt Gohde. A local poet (Bianca Spriggs) wrote a poem for Lexington and over 253 residents of the city had a word or phrase from the tattoo inked on their body. I was lucky to choose the phrase 'they'd have enough' which came at a time when my husband and I were simplifying our lives through purging possessions and focusing on more time with each other and our children. For me this phrase says it all: if we have one another, we have enough. This tattoo was done by Charmed Life Tattoo." 

Leigh Ann sent us this poem, as well, which was first published in Spry Literary Journal:

Strays

i.

Let’s call him something she said
bent over the veranda, breeze
lifting the silk baby-doll
nightgown above her ass.
He sees all he wants now and then.
The steel in her jawline, the fractured
lily nestled under her panties.
We’ll just call him something, anything really —
you can’t name a thing you’re gonna leave
she said and he agreed and the palm trees
nodded their heads and that night they made love
on rough cotton sheets while the cat tightroped
the deck’s banister and the ocean worried
at the door’s wooden slats. Morning she let him
in again. Took the little loaf of his body
to her chest and breathed in that smell,
that island smell she could never name
even though she knew all the right words.

ii.

This one’s paws craved necks,
    warmth of jugular, vulnerable pulse.
This one came and went as she pleased,
    afternoons bawled till she bloomed herself
inside out. How could anyone say no to this one?
    A tortie, a mink coiled around anonymous shoulders,
a needy biscuit-kneader, claws searching for a warm tit.

iii.

Oh, she loved him.
She loved him, his face
gouged like the bottom
of a cast iron skillet. She loved
him. Pigeon-toed slink, low bee-hive
growl. She loved him. Litters
of crying kittens all over
the neighborhood. Vagabond.
No good drifter. She
loved him. Half-an ear missing
kind of love. Born out of pity.
I won’t leave you
no matter what you do
desperate kind that keeps
a woman in dark glasses
even at night, the kind
that makes a woman go
weak, weaker, weaker, gone.

iv.

Swore she wouldn’t keep him.
Each night tip-toed cold
stone to driveway’s edge,
packaged pink salmon in hand
Here, kitty, kitty
His soupy mew
from the storm drain,
her hands wringing themselves
dry, the sky’s pursed lips
and the dogs whining, always
whining through the window cracks,
eyes rolling in their thick, meaty skulls.

~ ~ ~

Leigh Anne Hornfeldt, a Kentucky native, is the author of East Main Aviary (Flutter Press, 2012) & The Intimacy Archive (ELJ Publications, 2013) and the editor at Two of Cups Press. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, as well as the recipient of a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In 2013 her poem “Laika” placed 2nd in the Argos Prize competition (Dorianne Laux, judge) and in 2012 she received the Kudzu Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Spry, Lunch Ticket, Foundling Review, and The Journal of Kentucky Studies.

Thanks to Leigh Ann for contributing her poem and tattoos to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Bianca Spriggs

Our next tattooed poet is Bianca Spriggs!

Bianca offers up two tattoos, starting with this one:

Bianca explains:

"The first is a tattoo of the USS Starship Enterprise NCC 1701-D. I got this for a wedding anniversary gift from my husband in 2011. I'm a serious Star Trek fan and was reared on Star Trek: The Next Generation (I literally had collector's cards of the characters stashed in my childhood photo album alongside my relatives), so I figured what better way to make it official? I get all of my tattoos in brown ink because I always thought it'd be neat if they looked like I was born with them—like very intentional birthmarks. The artist, Joe King of Studio Ink at the time, was amazing. I barely felt the needle and this one, given the brown, has held up the best of them all. He has since moved to Easthampton, MA [working at Off the Map Tattoo]. Here's a link to his work: http://www.artofjoeking.com/."

She also shared this piece:

Bianca explains:

"The second is the tattoo I got as part of the Lexington Tattoo Project. In 2012, I was asked by two professors from Transylvania University, Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde, who are really into community engagement, to compose a love-letter to Lexington, Kentucky. The idea was that the poem was going to be broken into words and phrases and correlating circles and dots that comprised a secret image and spread out among participants in the city. We ended up with over 250 volunteers who all received free tattoos from the poem thanks to local sponsors and arts enthusiasts. After everyone received their tattoos the image was revealed at a big celebration this past Fall. Since the day I turned the poem in, a contrapuntal called "The _________ of the Universe: A Love Story," the project has really taken off and now has a photo book featuring all of the tattoos and stories of the participants as to why they chose certain words or phrases, as well as video featuring each of the tattoos paired with me reading the poem over an original composition by cellist Ben Sollee. Boulder, CO loved the idea so much, they are now doing a Boulder Tattoo Project and have chosen their own local poet. Long story short, I chose the words 'gravitational pull' because every time I try to leave Lexington, I am compelled to return. The artist was the amazing and eternally patient Robert Alleyne of Charmed Life Tattoo, who also happens to be responsible for two of my other pieces. Here is a link to the LTP website: http://lexingtontattooproject.wordpress.com/

Bianca sent us the following poem which, she explains, is "in the voice of Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender in Ten Forward from Star Trek: TNG, who was played by Whoopi Goldberg:"

Guinan: On Listening

What I do is not listening.
It’s more like picking out one voice
in the surround-sound of morning
through an open window.
Like hearing one bird call at a time
and recognizing its owner,
or being able to tell one type
of engine over another by how
it accelerates through an intersection,
or which door is being opened and shut
somewhere in the house.
Blended together, it all sounds good—
the opening notes of a great number
to which we all know the words.
The difference between you and I
is that I may choose to focus
on the tambourine or the bass line
for an entire song.
The art of listening is an heirloom
I did not always understand.
El-Aurians take games such as
“Who Can Be Quiet the Longest?”
as seriously as a final exam.
You can imagine how exhilarating
our road trips must have been.
I remember my brother and I bet once
that I wouldn’t be able to keep from
speaking for ten years.
For the first three, I scribbled notes
to everyone in a furious attempt to keep up
with conversations sidewinding around me.
I worried if I wasn’t being listened to,
I didn’t matter.
I would be the only one
in the room no one noticed.
By the time I found my way into a voice again,
I figured out that if I sat still long enough,
someone would inevitably interject
what I had already thought to say.
It was as though the universe
was dialing everyone in a room
and leaving the same message.
It was as though we were all restating
the obvious, over and over again,
fumbling for meaning we already possessed.
They say I’m a good listener.
But this isn’t listening.
This is just me, behind the bar,
mixing your voice in with a drink.

~ ~ ~

Bianca also directs us readers to the poem, "a contrapuntal, that people are now walking around with bits of tattooed into them" here.

Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs, is a writer and multi-disciplinary artist based in Lexington, KY. She is a recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry and multiple artist grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. Bianca is the author of Kaffir Lily (2010) and How Swallowtails Become Dragons (2011), and the creator of The SwallowTale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women. She is the creator and Artistic Director of the Wild Women of Poetry Slam held annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference and serves as the current Managing Editor for pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. You can learn more about her numerous shenanigans here: www.biancaspriggs.com.

Thanks to Bianca for sharing her cool tattoos and poetry with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2014 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: Darren Demaree's Heart in Ohio

Darren C. Demaree is our second TPP alumnus returning this year to the site. His Nabokov tattoo last year was a crowd-pleaser, for sure.

His kids made a cameo last year, and so, here they are again:

You can see, on Darren's upper left arm, some Ohio-shaped ink:

It reads "How glad I am to be so simple / as to write love poems for a state / shaped like a swollen heart."

Darren explains:

"The Ohio tattoo is my most recent addition and contains the end of a poem of mine, 'Ohio #5'. The work was done by Dino Nemec at I Heart Tattoo in Clintonville, Ohio, just down the street from I live. I'd wanted to get an Ohio tattoo for a long time, and when the 'Ohios' sequence I wrote made it into my first collection it seemed appropriate for me to have the state frame my favorite lines from the sequence."

The poem from which these lines were taken appears below, in its entirety. It originally appeared on Juked, as well as As We Refer to Our Bodies, Darren's first collection which was published last year by 8th House Publishing.

Ohio #5

The sun is up. The sun is gone.
The red barn is still there,

chasing what moves towards it.
Too much of the what is spent

on the silhouette of its coming.
A religion for any moment, I believe

in nothing, I believe in Ohio.
How glad I am to be so simple

as to write love poems for a state
shaped like a swollen heart.

~ ~ ~

Darren C. Demaree is living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. He is the author of As We Refer To Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag),and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2015, 8th house). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. You can follow his writings through his website, www.darrencdemaree.com, or on twitter @d_c_demaree.

Thanks to Darren for his latest contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 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: Sophie Klahr

Our next tattooed poet is Sophie Klahr and, like our previous contributor, she has an inky connection to Ranier Maria Rilke.

The tattoo consists of four words appearing at the end of the following excerpt of Rilke's first elegy in the Duino Elegies. The words appear in context here: 

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.

Sophie states, "This tattoo appears in my handwriting, and was done by Alex Cetina in 2010, at the Gaslight Gallery in Houston, TX." Cetina now tattoos out of Old Crow Parlor.

She also sent us the following poem, which originally appeared in TYPO:

HOUDINI DOG

Houdini would hide copies of the same key all over his body

during any trick with a lock. You give me a copy of your apartment

key but Dog, we cannot both go home at once. We say home,

meaning half a dozen places, overlapping by one.

I should be more careful and copy your way of touching

just about everyone to make everyone feel a little special.

I should learn to be your type of thief.

Dog, there’s the problem of your moon-face, how despite

any onlookers, you’ll offer food your tongue has touched to me.

Tell me more about Houdini— I know he was your hero as a child,

when your mother was alive, when you believed in a magic

that required no one else. 

~ ~ ~

Sophie Klahr’s poetry, essays and reviews can be found in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and Sycamore Review, among others. Her collaborative projects include creating scenic texts with the contemporary dance theatre influxdance. She is the poetry editor of Gigantic Sequins.

Thanks to Sophie for sending us her poem and tattoo for this year's Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 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.