Kathleen Peirce on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Kathleen Peirce, who sent us the following photo of her ink:

Kathleen tells us:

"This tattoo is the tail end of the sleeve on my left arm. It was done by Katja Ramirez (@katjaramirez), at Rock of Ages Tattoo (@rockofagestattoo) in Austin, Texas. The phoenix feathers are in the Japanese tradition, signaling rebirth, and the yellow flowers are Mexican marigolds, which light the way for the dead in Mexican tradition." 

The following poem, "Handihorse," is an unpublished work from the manuscript for Kathleen's 6th book, Lion's Paw.

Handihorse

Dollar for dollar, what did that
ever mean? A man wrote I grew up
dirt poor and hunted/fished for food. Don’t kill
anything you’re not going to eat. I do not have it in me
to kill anything anymore. Maybe a fish now and then.
She would put, my beautiful best friend, her thumb and first finger down
on my desk at school, fourth grade, then add her pinky and her ring, bobbing
her middle finger above the earth, making of her hand
a little animal to amble over,
whose lowered head would touch my hand
while she made the sniffing sound. I’d make one of myself
and go to her. Never did we think to make
four animals at once. Now I see Handihorse for sale, four toy hooves
for fingertips and a finger pony head, to make the same thing true
but without beauty. My friend
and her tumor are together forever now. When I go past
my big fish tank, I see and feel the Betta wait. I put my finger in
and he arrives again. Neither of us
is what we are. Something wavers toward and we touch.

~ ~ ~

Kathleen Peirce is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Vault, from New Michigan Press. Her work has been awarded The AWP Award, The Iowa Prize, and The William Carlos Williams Award, and was a finalist for The LA Times Book Award. Her work has been supported by the National Foundation for the Arts, The Giles Whiting Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches poetry in MFA program at Texas State University.

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

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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Tattoosday Boxcars: A Leonine Tattoo and Wearing One's Heart on One's Sleeve

I met Jeff and Jeanie in Penn Station as they were about to board an Amtrak train out of the city.

I've been trying to come up with clever terms for different inkspotting phenomenon, basically creating my own lexicon.

I'll call Jeff and Jeanie "boxcars". Meaning, I approached the two of them and gambled, asking them both to participate, and they came through. Like rolling two sixes on the dice (also known as boxcars). I would even venture to call them "blind boxcars", because I could only make out fragments of their ink, but they still shared.

Jeff went first, displaying this leonine figure on his left bicep:


It's a nod to his astrological sign, Leo, and was also selected for its nod to Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast).

Jeanie shared her tattoo below:


This piece literally has her wearing her heart on her sleeve and is inspired by Mexican art. The tattoo was completed by a friend of Jeanine's named John Flack.

I would have obtained more detail, but the couple had to board their train.

Thank you to Jeanine and Jeff for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!