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.

Marcel Shares a Flash Dragon on Sixth

I was walking down Sixth Avenue, south of 14th Street,  the other day, when I noticed someone ahead of me with a bunch of tattoos.

When he stopped at a crosswalk, I introduced myself, and learned he was Marcel Blue, an artist at Daredevil Tattoo in Manhattan.

He offered up this piece on his leg, based on some old tattoo flash, and completed by one of his Daredevil colleagues, Peter Chile:

Thanks to Marcel for sharing his 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.

Born on the Third of July (Dispatch from the Urban Tattoo Convention, Part 2)

When I went to the NYC Urban Tattoo Convention last weekend, I was expecting a lot, but I wasn't anticipating walking out with a fresh new tattoo. It was an early birthday surprise, to say the least.

My night changed for the better when, turning a corner, I ran into Phil Phlash aka Phil Sheridan aka inkone aka Flex Sinatra. Phil and I worked together years ago, before he left for bigger and better things. He left the office and picked up a tattoo machine, but before he did, we had many office conversations about tattoos, and he was an early fan of Tattoosday.

Fast forward to Saturday night at the UTC, Phil and I were catching up, and he asked me if I wanted to get tattooed. I knew he had recently started working at Tuff City Tattoos and was trying to figure out how to make it to the Bronx, when he clarified, "No, tonight."

I've been following Phil's work on the various social media and have seen his talents develop over the years. It had always crossed my mind that, one day, he might be adding to my collection, but it was not in my immediate plans. Until now.

Phil brought me back to his booth, and he showed me a flash book of some classic old-school traditional designs. If you check him out on Instagram (under Flex_Sinatra), you'll see that his traditional work is solid, and his tattoos are done with confidence and passion. My head was spinning as he suggested designs, I kept wanting to defer to his better judgment. This wasn't going to be a tattoo with great, complicated meaning. It was, however, going to be my first tattoo inked by a friend.

He turned a page and showed me an eagle. His face lit up. Mine did as well. It was decided. We figured out the particulars and the placement, and when I came back a bit later, the stencil seemed to have grown. This was no little Sailor Jerry shark; this was a big piece going on the side of my calf.

When all was said and done, this was the final result, a traditional American Bald Eagle:

What better way to celebrate my upcoming birthday, on the eve of Independence Day, than with a traditional  piece of American flash?

I even captured a snippet of the convention chaos while getting tattooed:

And, after we were done, Phil and I went around showing our work off to fellow convention-goers. Despite his expression below, he was fairly pleased with the end result:

Self-Inflicted Photo with Phil Phlash

I still have lots more to report from the UTC, so stay tuned. This moment, however, was the high point of the show, for obvious reasons.

Thanks to Phil Phlash for this awesome new tattoo in my collection!

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.

Ashley Shares a Couple Jeff Rassier Pieces

Earlier this month, I spotted Ashley in Penn Station. She has quite a few tattoos and, after speaking with her, learned she is the piercer at Revolver Tattoo in New Brunswick, NJ. (Work from Revolver has appeared here previously, as seen from this tag.)

She offered up two small pieces for our tattoo-viewing enjoyment:

She credited this work to Jeff Rassier at Black Heart Tattoo in San Francisco with these pieces.

While out visiting the shop in California, she spotted these pieces on one of Rossier's flash sheets and just dug it. She said her father even got the same tattoos because he liked the work as well.

Thanks to Ashley for sharing some of her ink 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.