Cynthia Manick and the Bard on The Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Cynthia Manick, who shared this tattoo:

Cynthia explains:

I begin to write poetry in high school. It was a way for me to process emotions, to tell stories, and I quickly realized that I always wanted poetry to be a part of my life. But who plans to be a poet as a career? And what if my poetry never left my notebook? A lot of people write just for themselves, not to share with the world. Also, in most Black households the life goal is a 9 to 5 job with benefits. So when I turned eighteen I made a promise to myself with this tattoo to always write, no matter the day job. I got it at a hole-in-the-wall parlor in Spanish Harlem. The definition of bard is poet or one who recites in the oral tradition. Consequently when I have writer's block, I tell myself to snap out of it because of this tattoo! (eventually it works)

Cynthia shared the following poem, which originally appeared in Nine Mile Magazine, Spring 2017, Vol 4:

In My Heaven

    after RC Lewis

Everything begins with

hunger. Some crave Bartlett

pears, trees that breathe,

playing violin on gold roads.

Others only answer to their

animal names, knowing

which heart chamber calls

to the wolf, the sheep,

the jackal. In my heaven

the currency is words–

people sing or recite

verb to noun to buy

burgers and cake, furniture

like wide screen TVs

that show favorite programs

on loop with no commercials-

Soul Train, I Dream of Jeanie,

and Happy Days.

Each corner of heaven

is guarded by statues

of poets. They hold pens

as spears. When you rub

their stoned feet, you hear

dialects-dipped in Marian

Anderson arias.

In my heaven Ms. Rose

plays the numbers

and hits every week.

Our shadows talk to other

shadows,  have smoke-shaped

tea or whiskey at noon.

They visit bonfires

to show their best forms

in the light. When you turn

18, 35 or 68 in my heaven,

you lay on a bed of tobacco

and ivy leaves, and the stems

shelter as you watch stars

fade into each other.

~ ~ ~ 

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). A Pushcart nominee with a MFA in Creative Writing from the New School; she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Poets House, MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center among others. Manick serves as East Coast Editor of the independent press Jamii Publishing and is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue. A winner of the 2016 Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry and a 2017 Barbara Memorial Fund Award for Poetry, her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day Series, African American Review, Bone Bouquet, Callaloo, Muzzle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

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

This entry is ©2018 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.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.

Kristine's Roses on the Platform

I recently met Kristine on a subway platform in Brooklyn. She shared this tattoo on her arm:

Kristine told me she loves roses and that she just liked the artwork for this tattoo.

She credited the work to Amy Shapiro (@amy_shapiro) from Three Kings Tattoo (@threekingstattoo) in Brooklyn. Amy is currently working at Lifetime Tattoo (@lifetimetattoodeniver) in Denver. We currently featured work by Amy back in 2015 here.

Thanks to Kristine for sharing this cool tattoo 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.

Yeny's Poignant Memorial

I was leaving my office on Broad Street earlier this week when I spotted a woman with a lot of work on her arm, waiting outside.

I stopped and introduced myself and she agreed to share some of her work. 

Yeny is actually in the process of getting a whole sleeve done, so she shared just one section:

 

Yeny told me her artist is Roberto Martinez (TheBeardedGentNYC on Instagram) and he is doing a cool Gemini tattoo on her forearm, but this rose and clock are a section of the sleeve that is a memorial to a baby she lost.

At the time, she wanted a black rose, but Martinez convinced her to add color, so that it represented a little bit of life. The clock marks the time when she lost the baby.

Thanks to Yeny for sharing her poignant and beautiful tattoo!

This entry is ©2016 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.

Emma's Tattoo for Her Faith

Yesterday afternoon, while walking to the subway through Bowling Green park, I met a couple of Korean tourists after they stopped to ask me if the National Museum of the American Indian was closed (it was).

I noticed that one of the women, Emma, had a tattoo on her thigh and I asked if I could take a photo for Tattoosday. She consented:

She told me "I got it for Jesus ... because I am a Christian."

It's a pretty cool variation on the standard Jesus with the crown of thorns, in black and grey, with a rose added at the bottom.

She got this at Wild Rose Tattoo in Seoul, Korea.

Thanks to Emma for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Nigel from the Dirty Thirty Shares Some Traditional Ink

I met Nigel on the Upper West Side last month, across the street from Verdi Square. I spotted some tattoos on his arms and asked if he wouldn't mind sharing some of them. He was happy to oblige.

The first piece is a gypsy, inked by Dan Santoro of Smith Street Tattoo in Brooklyn:

"The gypsy," Nigel said, "is pretty much from travelling and bouncing."

He also shared two pieces done by a friend of his from Richmond, Virginia, Gerald M.

"The eyeball here on my right arm is ... blood sweat and tears," he told me. "It represents a lot of different endings and beginnings, as far as work and life and whatnot."

I particularly like this tattoo, on Nigel's upper left arm:

"The train is," Nigel explained, "more or less a story of how my art finished and started." Also by Gerald M., Nigel had nothing but praise for his work:

"His specialty is roses. He won an award in Las Vegas for doing the best rose last year, so that's kind of his thing.  His little trademark is an eyeball, as well, so you'll see an eye in most of his pieces."

The banner identifies "The Dirty 30," a nationwide art collective of which Nigel is a part.

Thanks to Nigel for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

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.

Because She Said So

I spotted a woman on 86th Street in Brooklyn on Sunday with two visible tattoos. She had an intricate piece on the back of her shoulder, but she was wearing a lace shirt that would have required removal for me to get the photo. This picture above, however, was on her left bicep, and she was kind enough to let me snap a picture.

Some people can talk for hours about their ink, and some don't say anything. She gave me an approximate location of the shop where she had this done, 20th Avenue and 71st Street, which is very close to Kings County Tattoo Company, so I will make an educated guess and credit them for this piece.

When I asked the woman what was the significance of the phrase "Because I said so," she just looked at me with a sly expression and said it was a message "for my husband".

To see other work from Kings County Tattoo Company that has appeared on Tattoosday, click here.

Tattoos I Know: Erika's Ink (Part 1)

A long, long time ago, in a place called BillyBlog, an idea was formed. It was the idea that became Tattoosday. I decided to celebrate the many tattoos I encountered, with a photo (or two) and a story. A Miami Ink for the blogging crowd. Nothing about the artists' personalities, all about ink. In fact, all you see is the art, and very little else of the hosts.

The idea was to find strangers willing to let me take pictures of their tattoos, and post them with an accompanying text explaining when and where and why they chose to be inked. But I needed a guinea pig, so I started with a co-worker, Sephora, who seemed to enjoy talking with me about tattoos and music of all sorts. She was game, and she inaugurated the Tattoosday feature here.

And the rest is (brief) history. The Tattoosday feature, appearing every Tuesday was so much fun, I spun it off into its own blog and it has enjoyed a small, small viewership. But a blog can only dream. Through the odds and ends and goods and bads of Tattoosday's growing pains, I would occasionally saunter over to Sephora and chat about tats. The woman who sat in front of her, Erika, would often join in the conversation, but was mum about her own tattoos (if she had any, I couldn't tell. I wasn't scanning her clothing edges for ink slippages.)

Then in November, Erika was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and lo! and behold! What did I see?



Well, now I was chatting with Erika about tattoos and she mentioned she had a lot. I asked her if she would be interested in Tattoosday and she was game. So, over the last few weeks, starting with our holiday party when she was wearing a dress that showed off most of her back, through very recently when I snapped the pictures of the last of Erika's dozen (or so) tattoos, I managed to capture the catalog of Erika's ink, which is presented here for the Tattoosday readership.

Enough of my gab, lets roll with the body art!

Erika doesn't know exact dates on all her ink, so we're going to go chronologically. First up is this basic, rudimentary rose on her right lower calf.

By the way, Erika's tattoos all have pretty good story behind them. About 14 years ago, circa 1993, she was 18 and went into Your Choice Tattoo, in East Meadow, New York (on Long Island, for you non-New Yorkers). She was scared to death of what then pain would be like, Her boyfriend suggested the location on her lower leg because it wouldn't hurt so much. Of course, in hindsight, that's one of the more painful spots because it is so close to bone.

The co-owner of Your Choice Tattoo, Joe, made her go home and get her birth certificate, because he thought her ID was fake. He even joked that she would need to get a letter from her mother!

Two years later, at 20, she was back at Your Choice, this time working with artist Michelle, who put this unicorn on the right side of her lower back:



Erika explains that she was still a kid at heart, and that she had a lot of unicorns in her room. She saw this design on the wall and went with it. It's a reminder of that little girl she once was.

A year later, she was back at Your Choice Tattoo, with Michelle again. Like for most people, Ericka's tattoos serve as signposts for different periods of her life. In 1996, she was dating a guy who was heavy into the Black empowerment philosophy. "He was a big 'Power to the People' guy," Ericka recalls, "And I wanted to show him I was down with that." She exhibited this commitment by having an Egyptian ankh inked on her left shoulder:


Because the symbol simultaneously recalls Egypt and represents the hieroglyphic symbol for "life," it still resonates as a powerful image on her skin.

A year later, she had befriended another tattoo artist, Joe, at Behind the Lines II Tattooing in Jamaica, Queens. She had this small piece inked on her right shoulder:


The piece in question is the heart with the crown and the name "Marie". It's a tribute to her mother, Marie, who, Erika acknowledges, is "the Queen of her Heart". Below the tribute to her mom is another piece by Joe at Behind the Lines. It's a hybrid of the Puerto Rican flag and the Haitian flag. Her father is from Puerto Rico and her mother is from Haiti and she wanted a tribute to her heritage.


A year later (approximately 1998), she was hanging out with Joe and things were slow in the shop. He offered up, "I'm bored. Want a tat?" Ericka was game and this bluebird was inked on her neck:


She acknowledges that there is no real story behind it, but that she does like the art. Ericka is a great example of how tattoos can be addictive and that, once you get one, you want to keep going.

This concludes part 1 of Ericka's Ink. Stay tuned for part 2!

Thanks again to Ericka for sharing her tattoos!