The Tattooed Poets Project: Megan Volpert

Today's tattoo comes to us from Megan Volpert:

Megan explains the origin of this tattoo:

"The attached photo is of my right ankle, three days after I got a funeral tattoo for my great friend, Justin Hilbun. Justin died in a one-car crash in his early thirties, and was the first of my friends whose death I would classify as 'sudden' and 'too soon.' His jazz funeral was held in the French Quarter on 6-5-09, and I couldn't be there, so I got this ink for him that day instead. It's a fleur-de-lis, because that's the symbol of NOLA and when I think of Louisiana, I think of Justin. He was a very talented musician, and when he died, he was working on an album that you can listen to here: http://justinhilbun.bandcamp.com/.

The tattoo is just a straightforward tracing job, but I went to get it from a lady I'd worked with before: Danielle Distefano, the owner of Only You Tattoo [in Atlanta]. She wasn't there that day, and I had to get it done that day, so I went with Chuck Donoghue. I talked about Justin the whole hour, and Chuck really respected what I was there to do."

[Incidentally, Danielle Distefano's work appeared on the Tattooed Poets Project back in 2011, courtesy of the poet Noemi Soto, here.]

Megan also sent along this poem, adding it was written "a few years after getting the tattoo, which is also about that same space on my body and, in a way, about how I handled Justin's death":

*Ankles disappear*

They used to go behind my head. There were bony knobs that
would cut cleanly through glassine pools, step out soulfully
tanned and ready to run. Now my shoes feel too tight. Those
delicate corners have been rounded by the fat of a career and a
few too many loose cobblestone sprains. I wonder when I will
be able to predict a storm is coming, and want to define living
daylights. Attempt to circumnavigate the space of things that
have been scared out of you, and try to tie a rope around all
those things of which you used to be so certain. Use a mirror to
do it.

~ ~ ~

Megan Volpert is a high school English teacher who lives in Atlanta. The poem printed here is forthcoming in her fifth book, Only Ride (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Predictably, meganvolpert.com is her website.

Thanks to Megan for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Margaret Bashaar

Today's tattooed poet is Margaret Bashaar, who sent us this stunning photo:

Margaret explains what's on her back:

"The tattoo of a peyote cactus on my upper back was done by Octeel at The Drawing Room in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the past few years I've taken part in a number of medicine ceremonies with a Lakota road woman, and it will probably sound really corny, but they completely changed my life. I'd been battling with severe anxiety and depression for a few years when I attended my first ceremony, and that ceremony was the turning point for me. Since then I've made huge strides with my emotional and spiritual self and credit ceremony for turning the trend I'd been on around. Octeel is a part of the group of people I'd met through ceremony, and it seemed only fitting to ask him to create this tattoo."

About the piece on her lower back, Margaret filled us in:

"The tattoo on my lower back was done almost 11 years ago at a studio in Pittsburgh called Z Spot, which has changed locations and owners since and is now called Alter Ego. I'm about 95% certain the woman who did the tattoo (which I designed) no longer works there. It was more of a 'yay, I'm 18 and can get a tattoo now!' sort of tattoo, but I still love it and am very glad I decided to get that first tattoo." 

Margaret also shared this photo of her thigh:

and she explains:

"This particular tattoo is ... by Terence Kauffman at Kink'd Ink Studio in Windber, PA. It started as a tribute to my poetry press, Hyacinth Girl Press, with the hyacinth at the bottom of the tattoo, and has grown into a whole garden, which will eventually extend up my ribcage. There are two lines of text hidden in the tattoo - in the stem of the hyacinth is the line 'Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else' which was written by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and on one of the leaves are the lines 'yes the pun's/the devil's work, but God made language/let him in' by the poet Niina Pollari. The lines are from a poem in her chapbook, Book Four, which I published in 2011. The flowers in the tattoo (daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, cornflower, lily of the valley, and poppy) are all flowers that my mother grew in her garden when I was growing up, and all the flowers I plan to add are in the same theme."

I am grateful for Margaret sending these photos and, accompanying them is this poem she sent, as well:

These are the small moments when you know you love

When the legs that tremble are not mine,
when I have not spoken in days,
when the last taste on my tongue
is the sour of coffee

the mountain opens its mouth and I step in.

See, these are the tunnels
you must hold your breath through,
these the traffic signals that will always
make you lift your hands from the wheel,
tell you to make another wish.

You are where I go when I think I know myself,
to remind me I never can,
that there is always a new scar
to discover at the back of my thigh,
always a new lust to draw
like a needle down my back.

I am full of torn up stamens,
petals chewed to pulp.

I watch your hands grey as the days pass,
I see your hands in the fire.
They snatch the hummingbird from it.\

I've rolled this sun,
these broken branch tips
into a ball to slip
beneath your mattress.
I will keep you awake at night,
coax out your royalty.

I know you want to be suspended in the air,
full of spells or something like them,
that you see a warm blanket as the first step
toward seduction, and a badly timed joke
as the second.

Maybe we all do the same things to each other -
cut our teeth on one another's scapula,
scrape at each other's signatures with a straight razor.

Swing your legs over the edge with me and you will feel the planet
as it tries to shrug you off,
the whiplash of elliptical orbit.

~ ~ ~

That lovely poem first appeared in Menacing Hedge (click through to hear Margaret reading the above poem, along with two others).

Margaret Bashaar's second chapbook, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel, was published by Blood Pudding Press in 2011. Her poetry has also appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, Menacing Hedge, and RHINO, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she edits Hyacinth Girl Press and collects antique typewriters, which may be haunted by ghosts or demons.

Thanks to Margaret for her contribution to this year's Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Micah Ling

Our next tattooed poet is Micah Ling:

Photo by Michael Edwards

Micah has a type tattoo on her inner left arm, featuring the equation "Poetry =  Anger x Imagination." She explains:

"This is a quote from Sherman Alexie's poem An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian in his collection One Stick Song. I've met Alexie several times and he loves the tattoo. It's also an epigraph to my third collection of poems, Settlement."

Micah Ling  and her Tattoo, with Sherman Alexie

Micah credited Dan Stewart at Lucky Rabbit Tattoo in Muncie, Indiana, with the working, adding, "he's outstanding: really great with font."

Micah sent along the following poem, which is from her collection, Settlement:

"Settlement"

If ever you've seen a thing dying:
a bird or a dog or a man,
even an ugly beast, suffering,
not wanting to die,
putting up a fight of fights,
you know that look,
because it’s in us all.
That not wanting to die look. It’s not fear,
not anger, but something
else. If ever you've seen a thing seize
or bleed or cry out—really hurt—
you know that ache. It’s so much
like falling in love. Hearing a song
that brings you back—one that gives
a stomach flip. You've fallen
in love; of course you have,
and you've seen things fail.
Both are unmistakable; both
are like going blind.

~ ~ ~

There's more information about the book here.

Micah Ling lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches in the English department at Fordham University in Manhattan. Her third collection of poems was published by Sunnyoutside Press (Buffalo, NY) in May, 2012. She writes for and manages the website Ringsidereviews.com.

Thanks to Micah for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kirsten Smith

It is astonishing to realize that this is the start of our fifth annual Tattooed Poets Project! When we first started, I was worried I'd be able to assemble a month's worth of poets, and here we are, about to embark on another group of the inked and talented. What's more, the interest this year has been unprecedented, and readers will be getting more for their National Poetry Month - there will be days when we feature not one, but two, tattooed poets.

We're launching our fifth annual installment with a small tattoo on an accomplished hand - that of Kirsten Smith, who is not only a wonderful poet, but a talented novelist and screenwriter. Check out her tattoo:

Kirtsen explains: 

"I got it in 1991 ... back when it was illegal in NYC! My friend Brigitte Sullivan and I designed matching rings on the train ride uptown to Darren Rosa's apartment; it was pretty last minute. It was the early 90's and we became best friends studying film at NYU. We modeled the design after some actual rings we always wore. Hers' had a heart in it, since her birthday is Valentine's Day. Life took us on different paths, but I always feel connected to her, thanks to this ring."

Darren Rosa has been a fixture in the New York City tattoo scene for over 25 years and helped found Rising Dragon Tattoos, which opened on 23rd Street on the ground floor of the Chelsea Hotel, and has subsequently relocated to 14th Street.

Kirtsen was kind enough to send along her poem "Tattoo Parlor," which was originally published in The Gettysburg Review:

Tattoo Parlor

I make my living with one hand on a girl's ass
and the other on a fuse box.
Three nights a week I'm in a room
filled with soft noises
or the brittle silence of men in pain.
Like any good artist, I have a poison pen;
like any good citizen, I pay taxes.
Sometimes, though, I like it too much,
the endless carving,
the pop of certain needles,
the ink on a punk rocker's breast.

And tonight, while a skull and bones
is travelling from my fingers
into the arm of a Merchant Marine
and two girls are giggling in the hall,
I wonder what I'm doing here,
if I can take one more day
of a brunette's blood on my hands,
or my best work
walking off into the sunset.
The girls are squealing oh gross
and the Marine is grimacing hard
and I'm taking their bodies and changing them,
I am taking their lives
and making them my own.

~ ~ ~

Kirsten Smith is a poet, screenwriter and novelist. Her recent YA novel, Trinkets, was just published by Little, Brown, as was her 2006 novel-in-verse The Geography of Girlhood. She’s co-written the screenplays for Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, The House Bunny, She's the Man and The Ugly Truth.

Thanks to Kirtsen "Kiwi" Smith for helping us launch our fifth installment of the Tattooed Poets Project here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo photos 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.

Celebrating Five Years of Tattooed Poets

As many of you who have followed Tattoosday over the years, April is a special month here, where we feature, in honor of National Poetry Month, thirty days of tattooed poets.

It is astonishing to me that what I dreamed up in 2009 is now entering its fifth installment.

When I first reached out to Stacey Harwood at the Best American Poetry blog and asked if she and David Lehman would help promote the idea on their site, I worried that I would be able to find enough poets willing to participate. I didn't doubt the existence of tattooed verse-slingers, I just wondered if they'd be interested in sharing with a fledgling tattoo blog.

Fortunately for me, and for you, Dear Readers, my doubts were quickly dashed and this year, it looked as if we were going to have too many poets. Is there such a thing?

A nasty case of unemployment has left me with extra time to prepare the month so, on this March 31, I have pretty much prepared and scheduled the entire month. I do expect to be busy with stragglers to whom I had granted spots, and will now find themselves as part of double days of tattooed poets.

In general, posts will go up in the wee hours of the morning and, if there are two poet days, they will go live in the afternoon.

I can't begin to name everyone who has helped with this endeavor over the years, but I thank you for reading, and ask you to enjoy the month of April and the wide range of poets from all over the U.S. who will be seen here, in the flesh, and in the written line.

Enjoy!

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.

We've Made Another List!

What can I say?

We were recently honored in a post over on Boar Skull, a site that sells plugs, body jewelry and organics.

We made their list of "Six Tattoo and Body Modification Blogs You Should be Reading".

I'm sure the six are not in any particular order, but we're #2 and, anytime Tattoosday is spoken in the same breath with the good people over at Needles & Sins, we're in damn fine company.

Hold on to your tattoo-loving hats, people. Spring is in the air, and the Tattooed Poets Project, Volume V, is a week away!

Inkspotting in the Media: Daisy Shares a Horse Tattoo

Way back in January 2012, I was reading an article in The New York Times called "Continuing Education, At the Bar" which reported on the growing popularity of educational events in NYC watering holes, citing "The Secret Science Club" as one of the more popular of these phenomena.

The club's Carnivorous Nights annual Taxidermy Contest was the event that really stood out, and the Times article was accompanied by a slide show, featuring club members posing with their contest entries.

Several participants were sporting tattoos. As it was January, a "slow" time of year for Tattoosday, I thought it would be cool to perhaps reach out to some of these individuals and see if anyone might be interested. It could be a new series of sorts, say "Inkspotting in the Media," for lack of a better term.

One person I selected was Daisy Tainton:

I noticed she had a tattoo on her arm and, well, she looked pretty cool, so I found her on Facebook, and sent her a message inviting her to be on Tattoosday.

I didn't hear back from her until eight months later, last September, with a note apologizing that it took so long to respond, but my message had been delegated to one of Facebook's sub-folders.

To make a long story longer, the passed time had addled my memory, and I thought Daisy was a straggling tattooed poet, who was responding to one of my inquiries for the Tattooed Poets Project, for which I send out numerous inquiries every year. I politely told her I would reach out to her in the winter, when I started working on the following April's installment.

Well, ultimately, this was all sorted out, but only after Daisy had sent me photos of a tattoo on her upper left arm, just shortly after it had been inked:

Here's the tattoo in better detail:

Daisy explains:

"I saw a lamp in the window of Housing Works, snapped a photo through the grate (they were closed and the items in the window were to be sold upon store opening) and sent it to my good friend Nathan Burke. He drew it as a tattoo, and my boyfriend at the time fine-tuned it before I took it to Annie [Lloyd] and Three Kings Tattoo [in Brooklyn]."

Daisy tells us:

"I am an Insect Preparator at the American Museum of Natural History. I love insect jewelry because it showcases nature's beauty and bounty -- and I feel good about using beetles that were farm raised instead of harvested wild. This way they get to live their full lives in peace and then live on as exquisite adornments in loving homes.

In addition, I have the pleasure of being a yearly entrant and award-winner in the Carnivorous Nights Brooklyn Taxidermy Contest, where in years past I have displayed many ridiculous and whimsical items ranging from beetle dioramas to antique fur coat sculptures to jewelry."

Here are some more great links about the Carnivorous Nights events:

This is a great video from Daily Motion:

New York hosts annual taxidermy contest by afpenglish

And a piece in The Wall Street Journal online.

And this post which has a photo of one of Daisy's dioramas.

Thanks to Daisy Tainton for sharing her tattoo and introducing us to the art of competitive taxidermy!

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.