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Jumat, 17 Juli 2015

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.

Jumat, 10 Juli 2015

Eugenia and A Letter (Tattooed Poet of the Week)

Our tattooed poet of the week is Eugenia:

Eugenia explains:

"I had been thinking for some years about getting a tattoo using sacred text of some kind. I believe it is the path of the poet to serve as an alchemist of language, so I felt myself drawn as a writer more toward a language-based tattoo rather than a strictly art-based one. I was thumbing through a book by John Stevens entitled Sacred Calligraphy of the East, when I saw the Siddhaṃ letter A, and I knew I had found my tattoo. Siddhaṃ is the name of a script used for writing Sanskrit during the period ca 600-1200 CE, and is descended from Brahmi and Gupta script. Of my particular seed syllable the text states:

'A is the first and most important of the Siddhaṃ characters. It is the source of all vowels and consonants; it includes and is included in every sound produced by human beings. Hence, in both a physical and spiritual sense it is the origin of all elements. It is the seed character of Mahavairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), the supreme Buddha who manifests the unity of all phenomena. A is uncreated, the primordial form of existence.'

I received my tattoo by a young man working at Lovedog Tattoo in Soquel, California in 2000."

Eugenia sent us the following poem, which said her "relates best to this tattoo [and] is a poem of transformation, with images that are Buddhist in nature ... previously published in Chiron Review.

Shing*

I used to believe I was worthless
repeated mantras to turn my blood black
my skin lusterless

I came to believe in darkness
the tumbling down to truth

a silver pearl at the center of each battered heart

I wanted to believe in one God
Ahimsa
Atman
the great returning after death

I still believe the world is round
a black hole
denser than Pound’s Cantos
too heavy for its own fortunes

still
now

I watch the stars grow heavy with light
multiply into twos and fours
a million butter lamps spilling over

golden fish throw their marks
across a thousand seas
gilding stagnant pools in their wake

magpies gather on moonlit nights
chanting their secret
oracular tomes

a lotus blossom blooms in the mire
pulling itself from Cimmerian darkness
into the shing of this pendent world

*“Shing”: Tibetan for “field,” “good place,” or “realm,” and sometimes refers to a Buddha’s paradise.

~ ~ ~

Eugenia lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in MonkeyBicycle, Cascadia Review, The Gambler Magazine, The Found Poetry Review, Literary Orphans and elsewhere. A chapbook of her prose poems, Pamyat Celo/Memory Village, was published in 2007. She is also an analog photographer and loves working with Mod Podge.

Thanks to Eugenia for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

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Jumat, 26 Juni 2015

Shauna Osborn's First Tattoo (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next Tattooed Poet of the Week is Shauna Osborn, who sent us this image:

Now, I know readers have been spoiled of late with some exceptional work, but this one has an interesting origin, as Shauna explains:

"This tat may not look like much, but it has a great back story. I’d wanted a tattoo since I was a little kid—I envied my grandpa’s large Navy tats he’d gotten while in the service. Most of my family was square against it, especially since I was female, so I figured it’d be a while after I moved out before I’d get the chance to ink up. I turned eighteen in the spring of ’98, moved out, and started college.

One Saturday a couple months into my first semester, my dad came by the dorms unexpectedly and told me we were going on a road trip. He didn’t tell me what we were doing, or why, just said it was a surprise.

We drove south several hours toward Texas until we hit Wichita Falls. Dad pulled up to Altered Images and said he was getting us both our first tattoos. Tattoo shops were still illegal in Oklahoma at that time, so he’d brought us to the closest shop he’d heard good things about from some coworkers.

He got a bicep tat of the Chevy logo with American flag detailing. Because I wasn't prepared with the designs I'd drawn up I had to go with a piece of flash. I chose this one as an representation of my past and hopes for the future. Allie, an apprenticing female artist, fixed me up with this one and gave my baby sister a temporary tattoo of Timon, Nathan Lane’s character in the Lion King."

Shauna sent us the following poem, which first appeared in Poesis Review #6:

Doppelgänger

My nocturnal self has left--

lost her somewhere in Oakland

to the blacktop covered roads.

She feared the desert heat

after the coldness of the city.

Feared it’d melt her resolution,

drown out her loudest screech--

replace the hard, coal-pressed hate

that serves as her grounding center

with a dripping puddle of snot.

While I wander the white & painted sand,

she frolics through asphalt & smog,

roams among drag queens & junkies

that ride the waves of Puget Sound--

making love to dreadlocked poet beggars

stealing rides on cable cars &

slicing the leash off every dog she sees

with her dad’s rusty pocketknife.

Scott saw her late last week, flagged her down

from alternate subway platforms, screaming & jumping

like someone slain in the spirit

but the only response he received was a dramatic

turn, her long braided dreads brushing the subway

floor, as she bent in full curtsey

& then a slow-blown kiss

as she walked away.

~ ~ ~

Shauna Osborn is an artist, wordsmith, and community organizer. Recently, she became Artist in Residence for the 2015 A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Writing Retreat. She is working on a series of indigenous comic books and a book length choreopoem. Her creative work is included in As/Us, Adrienne, Cultural Weekly, Hueso Loco, Poets’ Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Spiral Orb, Mas Tequila Review, Yellow Medicine Review, and Upstreet. You can find her online at shaunamosborn.wordpress.com.

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

Sabtu, 20 Juni 2015

Michele Battiste's "Poorly Done Sun" (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next Tattooed Poet of the Week is Michele Battiste, who acknowledges that her tattoo is not that great. Sometimes, however, it's not about the tattoo itself, but the process. See for yourself:

Michele explains:

"I have a poorly done sun on my right shoulder that I got in the small seaside town of Lovalette, NJ (near Wildwood) in 1992 when I was 20 years old. I went with my older brother who was a bouncer. He got high right before his tattoo (steal-your-face) and proceeded to turn a ghastly white before he almost fainted. I still tease him about that. Later, when someone handed me a card with a line drawing of a cat on it in NYC, I wanted to get it as my second tattoo. I kept the card in my wallet and kept putting off the tattoo. Then one day shopping in a department store, I found a really garish pair of jeans, looked at the label and saw my cat. It was the logo for Baby Phat. I almost became a walking advertisement. I'm still deciding on my second tattoo. I've always loved the idea of Man Ray's Ingre's Violin."

Michele sent us the following poem:

Impending

for A. A.

When the storm moves away, as I do.

When the storm touching.

When the hand is leading.

When the hand the light.

When the eye takes what it wants.

When the eye and not touching.

The hand between slats of a chair back.

The eye releases the light.

When the storm shakes the portico

this thigh that thigh are the same.

(The storm

is a bloodthirsty thing.)

When the mouth, without effort, claims.

When the storm approaches

touching the light and not touching

the light are the same thing.

~ ~ ~

Michele Battiste is the author of Uprising (2014) and Ink for an Odd Cartography (2009), both published by Black Lawrence Press. She was a finalist for the 2013 National Poetry Series and is the author of five chapbooks, the most recent of which is Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book Press, 2014). She received a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant to conduct research in Budapest for Uprising, and was awarded a Blue Mountain Center Residency to complete the first draft. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Anti-, The Awl, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Mid-American Review, among others. Michele has taught poetry writing workshops for Wichita State University (WSU), the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson, KS, Gotham Writers' Workshops, and the national writing program Teen Ink. She has received grants and awards from WSU, the New York Foundation for the Arts, AWP, the Center for the American West, and the NY State Senate. She lives in Colorado where she raises funds for organizations undoing corporate evil.

Thanks to Michele Battiste for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

Jumat, 05 Juni 2015

Tom Cloud's Colorful Ink (The Tattooed Poets Project)

The first tattooed poet of the week for June is Tom Cloud, who is not your typical poet that we generally see here on Tattoosday. Tom can't be found in the pages of literary magazines, but that doesn't disqualify him as a poet. And his tattoos are bright, colorful, and heavy with meaning.

I'll let Tom do all the heavy lifting in this post:

"My name is Tom Cloud and my wife and I own a store in Mountain View, Arkansas called For Mother Earth.

I am 60 years old and write poetry purely for pleasure and for emotional release. I am not published outside of a couple of forgotten vanity press books and an odd website or two.

When my Doctor saw my tats she asked if I was some kind of ' Hindu Sailor'? The truth is that I love Eastern Indian art and mythology. While I do not believe in the Gods as such, each symbolizes an important concept and that is why they were chosen as my tattoos.

The Krsna tat is on my left forearm and represents the Call back to Eternity, and the Peace of the Spirit. On the right forearm is Ganapati... or Ganesha... who is Overcomer of Obstacles and brings wisdom and learning.

On the ankles are anklets made up of lotus flowers, two with the OM inside to represent Everything and two with nothing inside to represent the Silence. They are joined by chains in Sanskrit that read OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI, a call to Peace and a reminder for me to walk each step in Peace.

The White Rose is on my left thumb and is for Die Weisse Rose, for the young people who published under that name in resistance to the rise of the Nazi Party and it's precepts and wars as a commitment to speak my Truth about such things in my own times.

All tattoos were done by Dessa Blackthorn, who owns Tattooz By Sassy in Mt. Home, Arkansas."

I really love these tattoos on Tom. He also sent us this poem:

Tao Walker

The Mountain’s so lonely,
that I have to come down…
wandering my way from
the peak to the town.

Through a maze of trails
that are never the same,
finding lost pilgrims,
who are looking for names…

sometimes guiding the pilgrims
toward where they need go, or
telling others they seek for
things I don’t know.

I try to walk quietly-
to learn what I see…
so not to shock Nature from
Her Great Reverie…

Then comes the outskirts, the
sprawling of town…
the bustle picks up, and
the hustle goes down!

Kaleidoscopic, the busy-ness!
It’s always a shock
to enter a Reality of
numbers, of clocks…

they all speak my language
all talking to me, but
I am buffeted by Purposes,
dazed by the Meanings I see…

indeed, Human RACE!
God’s Sacred Zoo!
I absorb this Reality as
equally True.

Then, I reach overload, and
must slip away…
redeemed in the calmness as
I accept my own Way…

at home on the pathways
that wind toward a Peak…
joining lone pilgrims
for a time, as they seek

some golden Grail,
some symbol of Tao
encouraging their searching for
that lost Sacred Cow,

before reaching a cross-road
where I pass them by, to
go my pathless Way
to my home in the sky…

~ ~ ~

Thanks to Tom Cloud for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

Kamis, 28 Mei 2015

Vulnerable, But Capable of Flight - Sara Henning's Dove (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Today we have another tattooed poet, Sara Henning, in our ongoing Tattooed Poet of the Week series. Sometimes tattoos are not always colorful and elaborate, yet they still still are full of powerful meaning and symbolism. This is Sara's tattoo:

She explains:

"I got this tattoo when I was 24 and on a visit home (to Athens, Georgia) while I was pursuing an M.F.A. in Poetry at George Mason University. I had wanted to get the tattoo for a long time, because the tattoo, a recreation of a dove in flight hovering around my kidney area, functioned as an effigy for the life I wish I could have been living. I was in a relationship at the time that had turned physically violent, and my partner had been arrested and banned from our apartment for acts of physical violence against me. I recall often going to school to work in the Writing Center or attending classes covered in bruises from where he would take out his aggression on me. I felt trapped, and I wanted this dove on my body because it depicts the animal's belly, breast, underside of its wing: all of the places most vulnerable and violable. Nonetheless, the creature is able to wing its way out of crisis. I felt that the dove represented to me the dichotomy of the abused woman: vulnerable but capable of flight. Whether she would fly or not was up to her. I'm proud to say I flew."

Sara sent us the following poem, which was previously published in Conte:

AUBADE WITH YOUR HANDS AROUND MY NECK

“Even though I have been out of psychiatric hospital for two years, I am still a missing person for the public who have heard of me. I am neither alive nor dead and, though I have not been buried, I am ‘bodiless.’”

--Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever

My neck like

a shattered mare’s.

But not before

you’re St. Thomas

the Apostle, provoking

the dove-grey specter

of your grandfather’s

tobacco smoke.

My mane unfurling a loamy

intoxication as though

you’re scything barley.

But not before

you only trust what you

can hold

in your hands.

The fertile spikelets

urging you to hold harder.

The blue-black berries

divulging under

the honey-scented folds.

But not before

you learn that after

hours of sheaving,

even chestnut branches

are smooth

and plundered

as a sheared ewe.

My body falling forward,

creamy cluster of elder flower.

But not before

you learn to burn

the chaff you can’t

plough.

And when the empire moth

pauses to tongue

the languor, she is only

pleasuring herself

with an empurpled secret

that left raw,

would poison

most men.

~ ~ ~

Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink, 2013), as well as two chapbooks, Garden Effigies (Dancing Girl Press, 2015) and To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, Greensboro Review, and RHINO, and anthologies such as Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (2013). She holds an M.F.A. from George Mason University, and she is currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Assistant Managing Editor for the South Dakota Review and on the Editorial Board at Sundress Publications.

Thanks to Sara for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here at Tattoosday on the Tattooed Poets Project!

Jumat, 22 Mei 2015

Paulette Beete's Butterfly (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next Tattooed Poet of the Week is Paulette Beete, who sent us this photo:

Paulette tells us:

"The image is of my 3rd tattoo, which was inked in June 2011. My sister also has a few tattoos and we decided to get the same tattoo to celebrate the fact that, after a lot of work, we'd become best friends. We both liked the idea of a butterfly because it represents a specific type of change. When caterpillars become butterflies, they become who they were meant to be all along, which was a great metaphor for our journeys of growing into ourselves. We worked with Bill at Ambrotos Tattoo in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. We liked this butterfly because it didn't look too girly like so many butterfly tattoos do. My sister didn't like the stars so Bill made a couple of sketches that replaced the stars with ribbons. Ultimately I kept the stars because they felt quirky like me. My sister's much more elegant than I so the version with the ribbons fit her perfectly."

Paulette sent us the following poem, "The Makers of Memorials," which was previously published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She noted, "I believe that the best tattoos are memorials of a sort; stories that we carry on the outside as well as the inside."

The Makers of Memorials

They sing. They sing blue songs
their mothers wore.
They sing grief, bone-thick & left-handed.
They sing songs cross oceans, cross sidewalks.
They sing skies sealed shut.
They sing men born wearing walking shoes.
They sing women born palms up.
They sing from mouths without lipstick,
charts without notes, pianos without tunes.
They sing back-door songs & apron-
tied-low songs. They sing.
Unmaking the made into something less
teeth-breaking. They sing
dead crops, dead gods, men
put down, men put out,
dreams put off. Off key, off beat, they sing.
Steady. Loud. Relentless. They sing
instead of, in spite of, next door to. They sing
in clinics, in bedrooms, on corners. They sing.
Women in blue & purple, in thorn tiaras braided
from agains & nevermores & never minds.
Songs of children lost, of savings lost,
pawn tickets lost.
They sing. They sing. They sing
blue songs of our mothers,
holier-songs of our blue mothers.
They sing the slow leak that will drown
the world. They call God home
for the re-making.

~ ~ ~

Paulette Beete's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in magazines including Crab Orchard Review, Escape into Life, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, and The Found Poetry Review. Her chapbooks include Blues for a Pretty Girl (Finishing Line Press) and Voice Lessons (Plan B Press). Her work also appears in several anthologies, including Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC. She blogs (occasionally) at thehomebeete.com.

Thanks to Paulette for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

Jumat, 15 Mei 2015

All Of Her Tattoos Have Wings - heather hughes is Our Tattooed Poet of the Week

Our next Tattooed Poet of the Week is heather hughes. She is sharing this tattoo:

heather tells us:

"I have four tattoos (at the moment), and of course I chose one that's difficult to photograph to send: a dragon silhouette on my left ribcage. The ink was done at Chameleon in Cambridge, MA, and I went there with 3 other poet friends who were also getting work. The art is based on drawings by Wayne Anderson that are featured in Peter Dickinson's book THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS.

I developed an obsession with fantasy, and dragons in particular, largely because of an 80s Rankin & Bass animated adaptation (which I still deeply love). When I went into the tattoo shop, I thought I was going to get this design much smaller, and on my left forearm. Instead, I walked out with a dragon next to my heart. I was coming out of a fragile headspace and had only recently recommitted myself to making art. My dragon reminds me that I can be fierce, that I can protect what matters most, that I can continue to believe in what seems impossible. He's found his way into a poem. And I expect that someday I will have another dragon tattoo to keep him company."

heather sent us the following poem:

Specter: Last Words

Hollow out

spine

and binding

— open —

thousandstarred spark

I dream your funeral speech

you stammer at my ghost

leaving these pages to soak on the porch.

~ ~ ~

heather hughes hangs her heart in Boston and Miami. All of her tattoos have wings. Her poems have appeared in Bad Penny Review, Cream City Review, Grain, Hinchas de Poesía, and Prick of theSpindle, among others. She posts NaPoWriMo & letterpress experiments at dragonheartbeat.tumblr.com and can also be visited virtually at birdmaddgirl.com or @birdmaddgirl on twitter.

Thanks to heather for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

Jumat, 08 Mei 2015

Tattooed Poet of the Week - Jendi Reiter and Her Lion (The Tattooed Poets Project)

The number of submissions for April 2015's Tattooed Poets Project was unprecedented. As a result, I was unable to post everyone's work. Last year, we had an extended celebration of tattooed poets in May and June with a "Tattooed Poet of the Week." We're resurrecting this practice this year, for as long as we have submissions to share.

Our first 2015 Tattooed Poet of the Week is Jendi Reiter:

Jendi explains:

"The lion represents Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, as well as the courage of my masculine spiritual side. The original artwork is by Nycci Traynor at InkWell Studio in Bristol, CT. It is based on the first logo of WinningWriters.com, the online resource for creative writers that my husband and I have operated since 2001.

I chose Nycci to apply my first tattoo because she did a beautiful job on my mom-of-choice Roberta's tattoo, a colorful tree frog on her bicep. The frog is Roberta's totem animal as the lion is mine.

I've always admired tattoos as an art form. For me, it also meant taking back ownership of my body, and manifesting my personal journey out of shame and secrecy, into truth and power.

As the appointment approached, I did have some misgivings about the permanent commitment that a tattoo represented, since I've reinvented myself and changed my beliefs a few times. That was the inspiration for [the following] poem, 'Trigger Warning for Sailors.' It's included in my recently published collection, Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015)":

Trigger Warning for Sailors

Beckoned, drunk, by a mermaid's
permanent stain, I shrank
from the needle's blue.
I might have to change
my face someday,
turn my voyage inside-out,
a thief reversing his coat in the crowd.

A rare risk, I know.
More likely I'll slip
under the unmarked green ocean
stitched in a linen sack.
No bunkmate to joke
that I wore my bones on my sleeve.

They all look the same, at sea,
skulls winking on sail-hoisting shoulders,
blue roses creeping up bowed legs,
an easy girl on every arm
copied from flash.

What else remains — Names?
Anchors? The portside artist,
her needle restless as a watch's
second hand, pushed the Mom heart:
Every man had a mother.
But a trash bin was my cradle,
and I'm not alone
among those who take to the sea.

I've shared my hammock with men
of greater faith, who carved the blue memory
of hometown loves on their backs.
Through storms, we've swung in a dark
so complete I couldn't read
the log of their shipwrecks.

Our wake draws a line
of minutes to the dock.
I'll drink the night with friends,
wake up talked into angels
penned for life on my chest.
Remember, body,
the water undoes us at last.

~ ~ ~

Jendi Reiter is the author of the poetry collections Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015), Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010), Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009), and A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003). Awards include a 2010 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists' Grant for Poetry, the 2013 Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the 2012 Betsy Colquitt Award for Poetry from Descant magazine, the 2011 James Knudsen Editor's Prize in Fiction from Bayou Magazine, the 2011 OSA Enizagam Award for Fiction, the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize, and second prize in the 2010 Iowa Review Awards for Fiction. She is the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource site for creative writers. Visit her blog at www.jendireiter.com and follow her on Twitter @JendiReiter.

Thanks to Jendi for being our Tattooed Poet of the Week, here on Tattoosday, as part of the Tattooed Poets Project!