Showing posts with label Ruth Awad. Show all posts

Monday, April 24, 2017

Matthew Guenette on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Matthew Guenette:

Matthew sent me a few photos and I selected this one because, he explained:

"...THAT tattoo was given to me by the incredible poet (and tattoo artist) Ruth Awad. I was in Carbondale at the time, for a reading, and Ruth gave me and the poet Traci Brimhall free tattoos to commemorate our time there. Ruth did the tattoos in her apartment, in her kitchen if I remember correctly. My tattoo is a '33', with the second '3' reversed, thus creating a kind of '8' that one might also read as an infinity symbol. 33 is how old I was when I got married; a few months later, still 33, my mother died. That the tattoo also makes something of an '8' is for August, the name of my son. I love this tattoo...That it evokes an infinity symbol allows me to pour into the tattoo any number of meanings..."

Ruth Awad appeared on the Tattooed Poets Project last year, here, and the tattoo she gave Traci Brimhall appeared back in 2012 here.

Matthew sent us the following poem, as well:

I Will Not Mention Him

I will not mention his small-handed excuses.

His covetous old-man-ness.

His blundering baboon-blood.

I will not mention his locker-room banter.

His ugly, ill-fitting suits.

I won’t mention his paid thugs, his goons who hit below the belt.

I won’t mention what he said about your mother.

How he wants to sue her.

How he called her a drunk.

I will not mention what he claimed in Pensacola; Toledo; Kinston, NC; Gettysburg; Delaware, OH; Portsmouth, NH; West Palm Beach; Greensboro; and I especially won’t mention what he claimed in Jackson, MS; in Birmingham; or in South Carolina and Iowa.

I will not mention all that stinks about him like a flooded creek.

I will not mention what he said about women and where he likes to grab them.

I will not mention what he said about Muslims.

I will not mention what he said about Syrians.

I will not mention what he said about Mexicans and walls.

What he said about Asians and deals.

What he said about black lives.

I won’t mention every racist little bone in his body.

His heartless heart.

His bat-shit tweets at 3 a.m. for his hooting rabblement and their chapped hands.

I won’t mention the drought in his brain or the cricket in the basement of his brain chirping somewhere behind an empty box.

I won’t mention his 30,000 fears and corruptions.

I won’t mention his recurring dream where, in flames, he rides his tongue like a deranged horse into the valley.

It’s so beautiful outside. Isn’t it lovely?

~ ~ ~

Matthew Guenette is the author of three full length poetry collections: Vasectomania (U. of Akron Press, 2017), American Busboy (U. of Akron Press, 2011), and Sudden Anthem (Dream Horse Press, 2008). He is also the author of the chapbook Civil Disobedience (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in numerous journals and reviews. He has had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hessen-Wisconsin Fellowship. A graduate of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University, Matt currently teaches composition and creative writing at Madison College in Madison, WI, where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a 20 lb cat named Butternut.

Thanks to Matt for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

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Friday, April 15, 2016

The Tattooed Poets Project: Katie Riegel

Our next tattooed poet is Katherine (Katie) Riegel, who sent us this photo:

Katie explains:

"I got this design because when I was a child, I often found four-leaf clovers. I had a page in a photo album with them pressed under the plastic; I must have found at least fifty. The flower that goes with clover in central Illinois, where I grew up, is a plain white thing that smells sweet en masse. I want to carry that confidence and hope with me, to hold in my mind the idea that I could stumble across something magical at any time. So my skin says home and hope and luck. The amazing poet and artist Ruth Awad did the tattoo."

Ruth, incidentally, will be appearing before month's end on these very pages.

Katie provided the following poem, which appeared in her book Letters to Colin Firth:

April 29

Dear Colin,

I imagine you reading this letter to your wife. I imagine she reminds you what you aren’t: a statue, a moth, glass, someone else’s reason. I imagine you want to curl up into the beauty of the inside of her elbow, to be so clever you make her laugh with her whole body.

I am not always self-absorbed.

In an interview you said nothing had ever happened to you. But the world happens to us every moment—the bed happens exactly as you lie down on it, the cat with its eyes closed in the sun is happening perfectly when you see it, the doubt happens slimy in your throat at the worst time (because every time is the worst).

You were being humble. I am not trying to contradict you. I only want to say that it matters, this moment with the window closed, keeping you in.

Your friend, truly,

Katie

~ ~ ~

Katherine (Katie) Riegel’s latest book is Letters to Colin Firth, winner of the 2015 Sundress Publications Chapbook Competition. Her others include What the Mouth Was Made For, Castaway, and the anthology All of Us. She blogs to change the world with a collective of women writers at thegloriasirens.com.

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

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