dawn lonsinger and the Three of Swords (The Tattooed Poets Project)

We didn't want National Poetry Month to end without celebrating at least one tattooed poet.

Fortunately, previous contributor dawn lonsinger has been kind enough to share, with some new ink to appreciate!

dawn elaborates:

"I got this Three of Swords tattoo -- on some level -- to mark the grief of this year, of all the losses piling on top of each other, the pandemic making even more vivid the disturbing social inequities & technological dysphoria & substratal loneliness in this country. In tarot, the Three of Swords card represents suffering from major heartbreaks or betrayals, feeling lonely or lost or both . . . hence the heart (seat of love & beauty & affection) pierced through with three swords, which is also often depicted in front of a stormy sky with rain pelting down, the way mourning feels inside of us. And who among us -- in this warring world -- has not been heart-riven? 

Depending on the day, depending on the mood, I name the three swords: childhood, heartbreak, health . . . or capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy . . . or subjectivity, loneliness, death . . . or poetry, poetry, poetry . . . or Philomela, Antigone, Cassandra . . . or after those who have wounded me the most: P, J, K, or after those I have lost & miss: Carol, Sue, X. And, of course, I know I will keep on renaming them, because none of us know what our most profound penetrating incandescent woundings will be until the end. I also think it is meaningful that the swords -- tools of war -- pierce not into viscera, but into our symbol for interiority; the flesh of language against (in both senses) the mayhem of metal & 'progress'. 

Of course, when this tarot card is reversed -- which is how I see it -- it means some kind of reconciliation with pain, maybe forgiveness, maybe release or optimism. But I like -- either way -- that it's not a heart broken, but a heart wounded, and in an ongoing way. I think -- because we are addicted to narratives of transformation & transcendence -- that we are often too eager to be done with loss/pain/grief, to be healed, even though the ache reminds us of what we've held precious/irreplaceable, something or someone or some time that filled us with blooming. 

I don't buy the old adage that 'time heals all wounds;' rather, time gives us the space to learn how to better dialogue & dance with the pain, which remains. Whenever I get too precious, too tornadoed by how unintelligible and unfair the world, and am tempted to wish things were easier, that we could banish sadness . . . I remind myself that idealism is violent, and GOOD VIBES ONLY is a mantra of the repressed . . . and of something John Keats wrote in a letter: 'Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?' 

In my tattoo -- more classic in design & color than my other tattoos -- there are three flowers over the heart, and blood & rain (or tears) falling. I'm into its all-at-once wilding & smarting & opening & ablution. Also, my friend Aggie says the blood-tipped ends of the swords look like pencils, and that's a misrecognition I can get behind."

dawn credited the work to Orrin Hurley (@orrinhurley) from Three Kings Tattoo (@threekingstattoo) in Brooklyn, New York. 

dawn also shared this poem, which appeared previously in The Los Angeles Review, Summer 2020: 

A History

We were too late. The knots of clay & kink
of thorn & prophecy of fur were cleared away & the sun

was already a dividend of glass facades and rearview mirrors.
Between people a line of some sort or another:

grocery line, bottom line, perforation, window sill, the edge
of the bed. Your guess is as good as mine. Between you and me

are 92 blocks, 18 subway entrances, technicolor jungle-print
tablecloths in a dollar store folded into perfect squares

and stacked one on top of the other like prayer books,
kids snaking circles in the waterless fountain while

snowy branches hook around the sky’s bloodless neck.
Between people a line of some sort or another: exit only lane,

exclamation point, barbed wire, zipper, mail slot, trench,
the circumference of your wrist. Between you and me

the problem of fathers, snack packs of applesauce,
the questions of the dead clinging to the wet landscape

of the living, and countless lottery machines curving
tiny numbers like the bones of our inner ears onto slips of paper,

scattered secrets, and an aisle in every hardware store
where assorted compendiums of nails hang suspended like dreams,

beautifully fallow as if they might be spared utility. Between people
a line of some sort or another: deadline, Uber ride, VIP access line, fire

line, hemline, referendum, lip. And above us, chiffon shifts
of swallows unfolding a way out of the infrastructure, but also

above us: the intimations of heaven & our estrangement,
and below the underpaid line cooks & dishwashers, wingless

& sweating. Ours is a ghost story. Ours is a luxury gone
sour and a love gone sweet. Ours are the nameless blooms

we keep calling by made-up names expedient and/or beautiful,
the hydrangeas head-heavy
………………………………………& woozy by the checkout.

~ ~ ~

dawn lonsinger is the author of Whelm (winner of the 2012 Idaho Prize in Poetry and Freund Prize), and recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, four Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes, Utah Poetry Prize in Prose and Poetry, the Greg Grummer Poetry Prize (chosen by Eduardo Corral), and runner up for the Poetry Society of America’s Emily Dickinson Award (chosen by H.L. Hix). Her poems and lyric essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Subtropics, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Sundress,” was chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book to be featured in their Public Poetry Project, and appeared on 1500 posters distributed to libraries, public schools, bookstores, and universities. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, a PhD from the University of Utah, and is an Associate Professor at Muhlenberg College, teaching Creative Writing, Poetry & Politics, and Monstrosity & Apocalypse in Literature and Film. She has recently finished a creative nonfiction book that tries to navigate the consanguinity and dissonance between erotics and robotics in a Tindering world, and is now working on finishing a second book of poems, The Long and Terrible Taming, which explores taming and wildness in all its manifestations, and a speculative fiction novel, Beast, that strives to upend our ontological assumptions about animality vs. humanity. 

I am extremey grateful to dawn for returning to the Tattooed Poets Project and sharing her new tattoo and her poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2021 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.

Four Tattoos from Halee Kirkwood (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Halee Kirkwood, who sent us a quartet of tattoos to admire, including this one:

Halee credits this to Lana Bosak (@lanalikescats) at Tailorbird Tattoo (@tailorbirdtattoo), one of many amazing Minneapolis tattoo parlors. She notes:

"I was drawn to this raven on an antler as a poet who writes a lot about death, grief, and scavenging. Ravens are incredibly intelligent birds with the ability to adapt and problem-solve to an astounding capacity. Even when it seems that a thing has rotten, there might be nourishment to be found there. I try to embody the strength and cleverness of the raven every day."

They also sent this cool cat tattoo:

Halee tells us:

"This little kitty was a flash tattoo I snatched up in the summer of 2018. I was feeling frustrated with cars in the Twin Cities - I am an avid city biker and have had more than my fair share of cars driving dangerously and close to me when I'm in a bike lane, and felt a kinship with the feral attitude of the design. I was also amused by the fact that the tattoo had tattoos itself, and one of them was a dagger close in resemblance to the two swords I have on my bicep [below]. When I ride my bike on the busy downtown streets, I look at this kitty and think of braveness, the ferocity sometimes needed to survive, and then I get to where I'm going."

They also sent along this floral piece:

Halee notes:

This tattoo was also a flash - I am a very spontaneous person, both in tattoo habits and in my poetry practice. I like to grow into the meaning of a tattoo, and think about what a flash design means to me over time after that initial and immediate attraction. Something I feel a little shame about is that I don't know what kind of flowers these actually are - neither does the tattoo artist, as she designs a lot of her tattoos from vintage botany books, but I am beginning not to mind. I have found it fun to ask people who ask about the flowers what they think they are, and a conversation rolls from there! When I look at the flowers now, I think of the trio of myself, my little sister, and my little brother, and think of all the ways we have bloomed from the rocky soil we were given to grow out of.

Thank you to Andy Jacobs (@buffaloalicetattoo) and Minneapolis Tattoo (@mplstattoo) for the sweet floral!

And last, but not least, is the aforementioned swords tattoo:

Halee tells us:

These swords were my first tattoo, and coincidentally the only tattoo I have that isn't a flash piece! This is an adaptation of the Two of Swords tarot card, which I drew at a critical juncture in my life. I was faced with two choices - continue to live and write in the small town of Ashland, WI, which I love and pine after often, or move to the Twin Cities and pursue an MFA in creative writing. Both options seemed to have an equal amount of pros and cons, and I had to make a decision quickly. The Two of Swords asks the querent to break the binds which hold them to their swords, go with their intuition, and make a hard break. Make that damn decision. So I decided to move from small town Wisconsin and into the big city, where I still am today and am on the cusp of finishing my graduate degree. My swords are a reminder that sometimes you just have to make a decision, no matter how equal some choices might seem.

Thank you to Skin Candy Tattoo in Racine, WI for the ink!

In addition to the tattoos, Halee also shared the following poem:

Hennepin Moon

Caught between light rail crosshairs moon

Wearing earrings for the first time in ten years moon

Woolen skirt city moon

Split button moon

Cold ass on the concrete moon

Tobacco emporium moon

There’s no more snow in Minneapolis moon

for my favorite moon hard crust on the snow moon

Sore throat moon

Expensive dog with cheap sweater moon

Do people ignore me because they hear me

whisper to myself whisper to myself moon

Spit at my feet moon

Razor blade bridge walk over river moon

Indigo night steam lilting over carp moon

Give it all back moon

Follow you forever moon

~ ~ ~

Halee Kirkwood is a descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and nearly has their MFA degree from Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Up The Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle Magazine, ctrl+v, Pinwheel Journal, Cream City Review, and others. Kirkwood was the associate editor of Runestone Journal, is a writing mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, and was a teaching fellow for the 2019 Desert Nights, Rising Stars writing conference at Arizona State University. Their mini-chapbook, Exorcising The Catalogue, is available from Rinky Dink Press.

Thanks to Halee for sharing their tattoos and poetry with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 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.

Tony Trigilio, The Star, and An Adaptor (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Today's tattooed poet is Tony Triglio, who shared two tattoos. First this cool piece, representing The Star tarot card:

Tony explained:

"I’ve been reading Tarot cards for so long, almost 30 years, that I had a tough time deciding what to choose for this tattoo: the cards that are most important to me change over time, as I grow and my psyche and external circumstances change. But The Star has always been a constant. It’s a card that represents artists and artistry—often a card that signifies writing and music. It’s also a vital dream card. If The Star shows up in a tarot spread, this suggests that the querent’s dream-life is likely central to the reading. In this way, the card is a key pathway to the unconscious for me. The woman in the card pours water on the ground from a jug in her left hand; this water flows into the pond where the woman also pours water from a different jug in her right hand. Her left leg is touching the ground, bent at the knee, while her right foot is in the water. What is on the surface—literally what 'grounds' us—is inextricable from the below-ground flow. It’s how I would like to live, with my conscious and unconscious minds in constant, interconnected conversation with each other."

He credited The Star to Esther Garcia (@butterstinker) of Chicago’s Butterfat Studios (@butterfatstudios).

He also shared this tattoo of a familiar symbol:

Tony explained the reason he got this 45 record adaptor:

"This was my first tattoo—a simple, iconic image from my childhood, back when 45rpm records were made with holes in their center that were too big for the record to be played on a standard turntable. You needed to buy a cheap, yellow plastic adaptor that would snap into place in the center of the record. The adaptor featured a smaller hole in its center, and this hole fit perfectly into the spindle at the center of a turntable. I didn’t realize that the 45 adaptors were virtually obsolete until I got the tattoo. It became a generational marker. The only folks under 25 who could identify the tattoo were record collectors and audiophiles. One of my students once asked me after class, 'What’s your tattoo? Is it a religious symbol?' As a musician, and as someone who can’t really be happy without being surrounded by music, I said, 'Depends on how you define religion'... The tattoo was created at a shop in Oakland, California, many years ago."

Tony shared the following poem:

Sonnet—To Science

                        (After Poe)

A Death’s-head Hawkmoth smells so much
like a bee, he’s allowed into the hive and steps
over the workers as he raids the honey.
It’s what comic books call weird science. 
Eventually, we all disintegrate from a
sack of blood and organs into a pool of black
and red liquid, then something insensate. 
We’ve seen this plot before.  Everything

is derivative.  A man in white lab coat brags to
his wife that he can convert any living thing
to its liquid state then back into a completely
different solid object.  The man is sweeping
pollen from asphalt outside his laboratory cabin. 
The dust yellow, tinged with pink sunrise.  

~ ~ ~

Tony Trigilio’s most recent collection of poetry is Inside the Walls of My Own House: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 2 (BlazeVOX [books], 2016). He is the editor of Dispatches from the Body Politic: Interviews with Jan Beatty, Meg Day, and Douglas Kearney (Essay Press, 2016) and Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta, 2014). He teaches poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where he is Interim Chair of the Creative Writing Department. His website is http://www.starve.org.

Thanks to Tony for sharing his poem and tattoos with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Chip Livingston

Our next tattooed poet is Chip Livingston, who shared several pieces with us:

Chip's Tarot cards, Ace of Coins and Ace of Cups

La Sirena fresh and Jack of Clubs, part of spiral

Lila tattoos Chip's Sirena at Rock City Tattoos in Barre, Vermont

Chip tells us:

"Seeking to remember the advantages I might carry into any situation, I had Lila at Rock City Tattoos (in Barre, Vermont) put these 'cards up my sleeve.' The Jack of Clubs represents 'the man in the woodwork,' the secret admirer working on my behalf without my knowledge. The Ace of Cups represents abundance of emotional resources; the Ace of Coins represents abundance of physical resources. La Sirena from the Mexican Loteria reminds me of Iemanja, the goddess of the sea, who nurtures me in many ways. And with those charms under my skin, I feel prepared for anything. Above the cards on the right shoulder is a rough spiral, from the Egyptian hieroglyph for the verb 'to be.' And around the left bicep is a feather armband to represent my Creek heritage."

Chip sent us the following poem, “To Remove Anger” from his book CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK (New York Quarterly Books, 2012):

TO REMOVE ANGER

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, give him a place to rest his
thundering headspin. Let him see an all-red man removing the venom from the
spider. Remaking tobacco with his right hand. To pacify the coiled serpent.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, wrap him a stick of red cedar
and build him a fire to heat the rocks he carries. Offer those stones creek water and
watch them crack into jewels. Help him dig a cave under the wet roots of a cypress
tree. Help him bury them.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, make him a supper of sofkee
and sweetcorn, roast him the red fish you call from the river, feed him ripe
scuppernongs picked with your fingers.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, remind him he is a kinsman, a
red man, a great wizard united with another great wizard, to fail in nothing.
Remake tobacco with the left hand in a counterclockwise direction.

~ ~ ~

Chip Livingston is the author of two poetry collections, CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK (NYQBooks, 2012) and MUSEUM OF FALSE STARTS (Gival Press, 2010), and a short story/essay collection, NAMING CEREMONY (Lethe Press, 2014). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, New American Writing, and on the Poetry Foundation’s and the Academy of American Poets’ websites. Chip teaches in the low-rez MFA program at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, and at Regis University’s Mile High MFA in Denver, CO. Visit chiplivingston.com.

Thanks to Chip Livingston for sharing his poem and tattoos with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

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.

Rochelle's Tattoos Are Powerful Reminders

Last summer, while riding my bike along the Belt Parkway Promenade, I met Rochelle, who was kind enough to talk with me and share several of her tattoos.

The first one we discussed was this one on her calf:

Rochelle explained that this is an illustration from Peter Rabbit, but not the one that is familiar to most of us. She explained that in the German version, the story spoke to her more, as Rochelle once had problems with drug abuse. She explained that the rabbit in this other version of the story took to stealing vegetables from the farmer, “but he grows fat and he is then cooked in stew by the farmer’s wife." Rochelle added, "So he’s, like, consumed by his desire, and I was consumed by my desire to do drugs ... I got the tattoo when I was becoming sober.”

This tattoo and several others Rochelle has were done by Mike Lucena from Brooklyn's Flyrite Tattoo, who she calls "a great artist and a good-hearted guy.”

She also shared this piece by Mike Lucena:

Located on her thigh, Rochelle explained, "It’s a pysanky egg, it’s a Ukrainian egg-decorating practice ... an old folk practice that my mother and I did when I was a child and I got it in memory of my mother when she passed.”

She also shared this tattoo on her upper arm:

Rochelle explained that this is Monkshood. She elaborated:

"It's a delphinium  flower ... it’s like a bluebell ... almost, but they call it monkshood because, if you look at the flower it looks like a monk wearing a hood. It symbolizes usually death and ill-will, but a lot of people also use it because it symbolizes warding off evil and warding off death … I got it from Becki [Wilson] the day after my mother died, so now it has a huge amount of meaning to me ... Becki was at Greene Avenue Tattoo when this was done, but she has moved shops."

And finally, Rochelle shared a fourth tattoo, on another calf:

She explained that this was also done by Mike Lucena, and is her interpretation of The Tower Tarot Card:

"I study tarot…this is my drawing and then Mike did a complete copy and ... he had done the rabbit first, and then I was like, I want you to do it like the rabbit with my drawing … so watercolor, sort of, so he faded out the inks, the symbolism of the tower tarot card is like chaos, destruction and rebirth."

Thanks to Rochelle for sharing all of her awesome tattoos 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.

Daisy Shares Some Lovely Work from East River Tattoo

This past fall, I ran into Daisy as she was exiting a subway station on the Upper West Side. She was displaying some interesting tattoos and she was kind enough to take a few minutes to chat with me about them.

Daisy explained that she had only just recently started getting a lot of tattoos "all in the last year and a half." She elaborated "[I] just very quickly became this extremely tattooed person ... it just felt so right to meet these amazing people ... I love Sue and Duke, they're just so cool."

She was referring to two of the artists responsible for the majority of her new work, Duke Riley and Sue Jeiven, from East River Tattoo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

This amazing piece from Duke graces her upper left arm:

Daisy explained that this is based on a tarot card of the moon. She explained, "this card just speaks to me a whole lot - I brought in ten different versions of it and this is the one [Duke] came up with."

A small tattoo from Duke appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Daisy also shared some work from Sue Jeiven, including these pieces on her forearms:

Daisy explained that the piece on the left (her right), which she called the "Tiger Lady," is emblematic of Sue's work. Sue has been battling cancer. I'm not up to speed on her current condition, but she appears to still be going strong.  "She has the emblem fight the good fight underneath this and a lot of her closest friends have this tattoo," Daisy told me. She added, "She has it on her cards now and she has a stamp of it, but she just came up with it one day and it sort of became, this is like illness, the girl is... we don't know whether she is getting swallowed or she's coming out or she's peeking out or making peace with the tiger, you don't really know."

And the tattoo on the other arm? Daisy said, "It's just kind of a companion piece ... I just sorta liked the girls looking at each other, with the tiger and the fox."

Daisy also shared this tattoo from her upper right arm:

Daisy explained:

"Ship lady is one that Sue drew. She was just drawing some flash up and sometimes she'll start drawing something and be like, oh this is my friend, and this is my other friend, and so she said this one was me."

What was particularly nice for me, in meeting Daisy, was that I had met Sue Jeiven previously, by chance, at Penn Station, a year earlier. In fact, Sue shared a tattoo she has, a phenomenal piece by the artist Deno, here.

It was truly a pleasure meeting Daisy, and I'm happy we were able to highlight some of the fine work from Sue and Duke at East River Tattoo! Thanks Daisy!

~ ~ ~

This entry is ©2013 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.

Tommy's Card Represents Birth and Death

Back in June, I ran into Tommy, in Penn Station, who shared this tattoo:

Tommy told me this is based on a Tarot Card, and that it represents a message.

"I got it the same day one of my best friends passed away. I actually didn't know that happened that day. A friend of mine has a book of birthdays ... and every birthday has its own card and this is my card and I went to go get it and then later that night I found out one of my really close friends passed away. So, it's kinda like represents a whole lot more to me now." 

The piece was inked at Philadelphia Eddie's Tattoo Haven.

Thanks to Tommy for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.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.

Megan's Empress Impresses

I spotted Megan at the end of September walking down West 23rd Street in Chelsea.

She has an amazing sleeve-in-progress but, because it is still unfinished, she offered up this tattoo, on her upper right arm, instead:

This tarot card is significant because her mother is from the Caribbean and she grew up with Santerían religion in her household.

She has a profound respect for tarot cards and based on the time and date of her birth, has what she refers to as a "weird numerology".

This card is known as L'Impératrice,or The Empress, and has a very positive meaning. As interpreted by one site (here):

The Empress seems to be sure of herself, calm, intelligent, worthy. This major arcana represents the capacity, the Empress clothing is luxurious and invaluable.

This arcana is extremely positive...
...In the right position the Empress represents the intelligence, dignity, the authority, the mother, the wife, the right decisions.

The detail in this tattoo is amazing:

The art was inked by Annie Lloyd at Three Kings Tattoo in Brooklyn. Work from Three Kings has appeared previously on Tatoosday here.

Thanks to Megan for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Eric's Tattoo: Zero the Fool and an Obsession with Time

I met Eric on Seventh Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets earlier this month.

This tarot card on his left forearm jumped out at me:

Eric is a mixed media artist whose website can be seen here. He is an illustrator and is currently in school studying toy design. The tattoo he has is primarily based on a linoleum block he had created that recalls the Tarot card "The Fool". Because it is an unnumbered card in the deck, it is often referred to as "Zero" or 0.

The Fool often represents the beginning of a journey, oftentimes a "foolish adventure". He had this tattooed to commemorate his decision to move from Boston to New York City. While the decision may not have been foolish, it did mark a new journey in Eric's life.

The card was tattooed by Hannah at Regeneration Tattoo in Boston.

One may have noticed that there is work around the tarot card, as well, so it's only fair to show the piece as a whole:

And the tattoo extends up the arm a bit from the pocket watch on the right:

The additional elements in the tattoo speak to Eric's obsession with the passage of the time. Snowflakes are only temporary as they fall from the sky and melt, or become mixed with other flakes and lose their singularity.

The flowers are imagined creations representing growth. Eric's floral images are inspired by the artwork of Henry Darger.

He also notes that the time piece is cracked and broken:

This, he says, represents the fight against the obsession and paranoia over the passage of time.

The work around the tarot card was all tattooed by Kelly Krantz at the now-defunct Hold Fast Tattoo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From what I can tell, Krantz is not currently affiliated with any one tattoo shop.

Thanks to Eric for sharing his thought-provoking tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Nikoletta Nousiopoulos

Today's tattooed poet is Nikoletta Nousiopoulos:


This tattoo is on Nikoletta's left bicep. At the time she got it, she was researching the Tarot and she felt especially connected to the card representing The Lovers. She explains that "the original card had a giant angel in place of the Eyes of Ra. I preferred the eyes over the angel."


This was her second tattoo and was inked at Skin Grafix in Groton, Connecticut.

Nikoletta Nousiopoulos holds a MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her poems have appeared in elimae, South Jersey Underground, 2River, and Harpur Palate. She was a 2010 finalist for the Philbrick Poetry Award, and was a winner of the 2009 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. Her first book all the dead goats was released in 2010 from Little Red Tree Publishing.

Check out one of her poems over on BillyBlog here.