Joshua Marie Wilkinson on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Joshua Marie Wilkinson, who sent us this photo:

He explained:

My tattoo (on the left) depicts a Kewpie doll in the mouth of a coyote, done by Bugsy (@bugsy_pageau) at Machine Age Tattoo in Tucson. I wanted to get a ridiculous heavy metal piece after I was awarded tenure at the University of Arizona, where I used to work. It's an ode to one Bugsy did of a Kewpie in the mouth of an evil toad, to the brutality of the Sonoran Desert, and to my friend Paul Fattaruso's excellent novel Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf.

Joshua also shared the following poem:

By Which I Meant

                                                                                 I know my lure is useless.

                                                                                                          —Jay Wright

Double-eyed, thrown through
history’s vacuum shutter.

And into the thresher, splitting
the pond’s reflection
of an imagined dive
as we stand, moon-soaked,
on the dock over the water tonight.

Is it raining? By which I mean
Are we hiding from something out here?

How plainly I see in hindsight that
I was forced to play dead. I stopped
the cold speech from reverberating
in my throat.

It’s a bad ocean out there. Lapping at our
prattle. You thought that was laughter?
That was not laughter. It was a lure
in the light, a slowed diffusion
in the terrorized air.

~ ~ ~

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is a writer living in Seattle.

Thanks to Joshua for sharing his cool tattoo and poem 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kristin LaTour

Our next tattooed poet is Kristin LaTour, who sent us these photos:

Kristin elaborated on the history of this tattoo:

"I chose this design after thinking about it for a long time. It was my second tattoo, the largest I've had so far, and when I got it, it was the most visible. Because I knew it would be visible, I wanted it to be really special. The flowers are globe mallows, a desert flower. I grew up in Tucson and went camping all over the southwest. Mallows are my favorite flower from that area, and they range from orange to fuchsia  The book is for my love of reading and writing, and I wrote the prayer that covers the open pages. My artist, Doc, was so wonderful that he managed to keep my handwriting from the sketch that I brought for him. The feather pen draws from the color of the parakeet on the other side. The parakeet wasn't part of the original plan, but after all the black was done, Doc mentioned that I had asked about including a bird and there was a perfect spot for her. I had a parakeet who was my best friend when I finally moved out on my own and started my adult life. She was with me for almost ten years and is still my little muse. But those branches she perches on now really hurt to have inked in!

I had the tattoo done in Joliet, Illinois at Wolf's Fine Line Tattoo. by Doc. He's the best."

The poem Kristin sent us "includes references to the desert where I grew up, and the East coast, where I worked on my MFA and fell in love with the ocean.":

She Sinks

Her arms and legs are buoyant, but her body
always sinks. It's her stone heart, you assume,
or the memories she encases in cement and
buries in her lungs. She exhales gray dust
and her cough echoes in corners. It's unfortunate;
she lives near the Atlantic, buffeted by waves
when she wades up to her narrow waist into the water,
the only element that can hold her. Unfortunate
she won't come to us in Sonora, become a boulder
of granite, sun-warmed, and crying every time it rains.

~ ~ ~

Kristin LaTour has a chapbook, Agoraphobia, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press, as well as two others: Blood (Naked Mannequin Press, 2009) and Town Limits (Pudding House Press, 2007). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press Review, After Hours, dirtcakes, qarrstiluni, and The Adroit Journal. She teaches at Joliet Jr. College and lives in Aurora, IL with her writer husband and two dogitos. You can find more information at www.kristinlatour.com.

Thanks to Kristin for her contribution to Tattoosday and the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.