Kayleb Rae Candrili and Stevie Nicks (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Kayleb Rae Candrili, who shared this tattoo:

Kayleb's tattoo was inked by Timmy Tatts (@timmytattsoriginal) at King Cobra Tattoo (@king.cobra.tattoo) in State College, PA, 2014. The tattoo makes an appearance in the following poem, "Some Thoughts on Luck," which was first published with Peach Magazine, January 22nd, 2019:

SOME THOUGHTS ON LUCK

:::

superstitious sicilians in the mountains,

all we spoke about 

was mickey mantle and my father’s 

old mafia ties. 

can you imagine 

the rabbit’s feet hung 

round my neck during hunting 

season, the fur 

matted and the nails 

so desperate 

to finally decompose. 

what does it mean

to carry a dead

animal so closely to your heart

in hopes you might 

kill some more. 

:::

   

:::

when i learned to swallow 

i began to drink

the ocean. so much booze

it might as well 

have been sea salt. drunk and in

a bad love, stevie nicks 

was my only god.

and what is god

besides a superstition,

a belief 

in that which 

will never be proven. 

my inner thigh is tattooed with an effigy 

of a rock star—so holy,

but still proving 

the way liquor can take 

hold of even your skin, 

make it

something you’ve never seen before

and will see every day after.

     :::

:::

my father has always hated 

women, though 

he has always needed them. 

what a rich history,

this narrative of misogyny. 

counting fist-falls 

as sheep

is a storied simile. 

finally, i am no longer drunk

or superstitious.

and though i am marked 

by having been so,

i can feel love

now, like my father 

              never has. 

i am thankful to have been born 

his daughter 

because if i had been born my father’s son, 

forget about it.

::: 

Kayleb Rae Candrilli is a 2019 Whiting Award Winner in Poetry and the author of What Runs Over with YesYes Books, which was a 2017 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in transgender poetry. Their second collection, All the Gay Saints, won the 2018 Saturnalia Book Contest and is forthcoming in Spring 2020. Candrilli is published or forthcoming in POETRY, TriQuarterly Review, Academy of American Poets, Boston Review and many others. You can read more here.

Thanks to Kayleb for sharing their cool tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

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.

Amazing New Site! Check Out Fellowship Supply!

Last month I reviewed the amazing book Skin Graf, co-written by Michael "Kaves" McLeer and Billy Burke. Revisit the review here.

The day after my review appeared, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk about the book and graffiti tattoo, I met several of the artists featured in the book, and also had a chance to speak to both authors, including Billy Burke.

We resumed our conversation several days later when Kaves held a book-release party at his shop in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Made Tattoo.

Burke told me about his latest project, working with Fellowship Supply Company, "Purveyors Of Creative Tools For The Tattoo Artist."

He urged me to check out the website here, and spoke with great excitement about Fellowship's vision, embodied in this statement:

"Fellowship exists to promote craftsmanship while furthering the artistry of the tattoo community. We honor the dedication of artists before us through dedication of our own, shunning shortcuts in favor of sacrifice. For those who find joy in creating, the role of a maker is a life, not a living. In the art of tattooing, we blur lines between timelessness and mortality, between skin and canvas, between outcast and visionary."

Aside from a whole section of tattoo supplies, there is a lot of great content featuring the words, wisdom, and talent of some of the greatest tattooists and machine builders working today, like Freddy Negrete, Mark Mahoney and Timmy Tatts, to name just a few.

An amazing back piece by Timmy Tatts

Work by Mark Mahoney

Detail of a machine part by Dan Dringenberg

And check out this tutorial clip from Negrete on the art of black and grey:

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Tattoo artists, aficionados, and fans can get lost in the site, which just launched in the last two weeks. I can hardly wait to see what other rare treats visitors to the site will be getting in the future.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Fellowship grows and expands its amazing collection of articles, biographies, and tutorials. Readers should certainly bookmark this site for exploration in the weeks and months to come!

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.