My Maneki-neko (The Tattooed Poets Project)

It is the penultimate day of April, and I have completed submissions for one remaining poet, set for tomorrow. But what about today? Every year, I reach out to dozens and dozens of poets, and I have never struggled as mightily as this year to assemble our lineup. Every year, there are always a handful of rollovers for next year (or the year after), but I generally have spilled over into May. This year, there was a hole at the end of the month, so I've decided to selfishly fill it.

So, dear readers, today's tattooed poet is a returning contributor, William Dickenson Cohen, who first contributed in 2009 here.

This past February, I was at the Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention, and I left with this guy on my forearm:

This is a customized version of a Maneki-neko cat. Most folks may recognize the basic image from Asian-owned businesses, who have these cats, with waving paws, in their storefronts. The cat is meant to bring success and good fortune and, growing up in Hawai'i, they were everywhere.

Here's the one we've had in our home since the early 1990's, which survived several California earthquakes, and still diligently stands guard:

So, when I knew I was going to Philly, and learned that artist JJ Ohlinger from Prohibition Ink was working the show, I discussed the possibility of getting work from him when I was there. I told him I had wanted a Maneki-neko, and gave him free reign to come up with a design. He drew up two, changing the piece that features kanji to resemble a Pabst Blue Ribbon can. He said he looked through my Facebook feed and mostly saw posts relating to politics and beer, and he didn't think he could work our president into the cat design.

Post-tattoo with JJ Ohlinger (right) at the Philadelphia Convention

At the Philadelphia convention, the stars aligned and JJ was able to fit me in. The result is a quirky, colorful Maneki-neko which I hope will bring good fortune and future success to me and my family.

Back in 2009, when I snuck my own tattoo and poem into the first year of the Tattooed Poets Project, I diligently worked on a tattoo-related sestina, which I was thinking would be appropriate to re-share. I recently read it in public for the first time, and it was well-received. I decided against re-posting it but, if you're interested, you can find it here.

Instead, I offer up this new poem, hastily composed last Friday when it looked like I was going to need to fill a hole in our line-up:

Tattoo Poem

My epitaph will be tattooed

Into something more permanent

Than flesh.

But we’re kidding ourselves

If we think permanence

Is anything but temporary.

We are all data, with half-

lives,

Some shorter than others.

The red ink on my thigh

Is “falling out,” as they say,

The cells expelling molecules

Glacially.

Why decompose

A poem

When words wriggle like worms

Into the mud?

Blood is swept away

As the tattooer stretches the flesh

More molecules

Disappearing into some other form

Like fading stains on the sidewalk.

I hum along to the needle’s song.

The melody is beautiful

And the machines, buzzing their approval,

Sting and sing again,

Reminding us we are alive

In the moment

Before we disappear forever.

 

~ ~ ~

Please return tomorrow for our final post of the 2018 Tattooed Poets Project, and thank you for allowing me to share my newest tattoo and poem here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

If you are reading 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.net 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.

Brandon's Tattoos

Last summer I met a gentleman named Brandon Latham at the New York Empire State Tattoo Expo (@nyempirestatetattooexpo). He had just been tattooed by J.J. Ohlinger (@jjohlinger), who was working the show.

Check it out:

Photo courtesy of Brandon Latham

Brandon, who is an artist in Greenville, South Carolina, explained:

"I wanted to draw a tattoo, so I drew an octopus and shaded it and got the look that I wanted and then I gave it to a professional [Ohlinger] to make it into a stencil, to make it a cohesive piece, we kind of collaborated on it ... the octopus is a creature that adapts to its surroundings it has three hearts, and so I kinda did that to represent my wife, my daughter and myself  ... it's a creative unique character .... as soon as I thought about doing it, I saw them everywhere ... I thought about it for a long time because I'm not a very impulsive person, it took me a long time to even get a tattoo."

Ohlinger did a fine job placing the tattoo and making sure it flowed with the contour of Brandon's body. It's a great piece with solid linework and excellent detail.

Brandon also has this anatomical heart on the back of his calf, which Ohlinger also tattooed, back in 2014:

Brandon explained that "the different figures on the side[s] represent different things about [his] life." For example, the cat wearing the hat is "a Russian symbol that means even if you are born in mediocrity, you san still strive above and be an aristocrat," or, in other words, "just because you're born poor doesn't mean you have to continue to be poor, you can strive above that."

He also described the crow reading the book as a steampunk image, noting that "the crow, which is the only animal that analyzes human behavior ... has decided to take care of the children" after the kids' parents have gone off to work.

Brandon is a runner (10 half marathons and a couple of marathons), which explains the cool image of the hare with a tortoise shell on its back.

And the airplane, he explained "is a piper cub airplane, the plane that my dad used to work on, and my daughter's name is Piper."

The details in and around the heart really make this a cool combination of tattoos.

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

This entry is ©2017 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 Birth of Venus Reimagined (Kathleen Nalley, Tattooed Poet of the Month)

Over the years, I have met many a tattooed poet via social media, word-of-mouth, or in person. Kathleen Nalley is the first poet I've met via a tattoo artist.

I met South Carolina artist J.J. Ohlinger (@jjohlinger) at the New York Empire State Tattoo Expo (@nyempirestatetattooexpo) last month in Manhattan.

It was while hanging out at his booth, talking to one of his clients (whose work will appear in a future post), and chatting about Tattoosday, that the subject of tattooed poets came up.

I believe it was J.J.'s wife, who was working the show with him, said that they knew a poet that he had tattooed, and the photo was in his portfolio. The rest, as they say, was history.

I reached out to Kathleen, and she happily agreed to share her cool tattoo:

Photo Courtesy of J.J. Ohlinger

Kathleen explained how this tattoo came to be:

"I got this particular tattoo last June when JJ Ohlinger ran a contest to tattoo three people in celebration of his third year as a tattoo artist. Luckily, I was one of the winners!

As a lover of words, I’d always imagined Boticelli’s Venus coming out of an open book instead of a clamshell. Boticelli’s Venus was known the ‘birth of beauty,’ the feminine ideal. My tat riffs on the idea that women were created to be someone’s beautiful object." 

Kathleen also shared this short poem from her manuscript-in-progress, Gutterflower:

What Man’s Hands Wrought

Long  before  there  was fracking there  was  you unearthing 

the very earth digging trenches in soil spilling your chemical

goo  turning  mud to muck leaving nutrients to dry fuck you 

nature    heals  herself  in  time  even  the  most  eroded can 

make   anew   grow   pickups  from  seed  littered  the  wind 

always  knows  what  to  do  carry  things  away carry things 

where   they   will  bloom  wildflowers  color  the  landscape 

permeate the  air oh her honeysuckle hue she’s wild always

wild  always  remade  no  matter  the matter or intrusion or

drilling or fracture believe her she will

 ~ ~ ~

Kathleen Nalley’s prose poetry manuscript-in-progress, Gutterflower, follows the life of a Southern woman caught in an unending trap of poverty and violence. Kathleen is the author of the chapbooks Nesting Doll and American Sycamore. Her work is forthcoming or recently has appeared in Fall Lines, New Flash Fiction Review, Slipstream, Rivet, and storySouth, among others. Not surprisingly, she has a poem forthcoming in a violence against women-themed anthology from Sable Books.

Thanks to Kathleen for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday, and to J.J.Ohlinger for introducing us!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.