Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog)

Saturday, April 7, 2018

FKA René and Christ the Redeemer (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is FKA René, who sent along this tattoo:

René tells us:

"I got this tattoo of Christ the Redeemer at DV8 Tattoos in Concord, CA. I was 18 at the time and wasn’t a writer then. I’ve always been drawn to religious iconography and the concept of God in the traditional religious aspect but also the belief that 'mother can be God.' The poem [below] invokes my mother as a 'master of death,' a common theme seen in much of my poetry with deals with the intersection of border violence and the weight that it carries from generation to generation.

The Invocation

I asked mother

What is death?

She turned to the southern sun, hand on her waist

Mind on her pistol

Xibalba, land of the dead

Where the skeletons eat sweet bread

Mother

Who shot down death himself

Cracked open tombs

With black hair and

Silver steel

Killed all gods

New and old

Wisest and harshest

I asked mother

What is a god?

Victims of the night and cold steel

I’ve smashed their vials and

Temples

God is found

As the scar I wounded on your tummy

In April, on the day you

Were born

~ ~ ~

FKA René, anti-poet, miso based, AKA Young Ryan, college drop out and the Trap Bukowski tweets from @fka_rene.

Thanks to René for sharing his poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday and the Tattooed Poets Project!

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Friday, April 6, 2018

Cynthia Manick and the Bard on The Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Cynthia Manick, who shared this tattoo:

Cynthia explains:

I begin to write poetry in high school. It was a way for me to process emotions, to tell stories, and I quickly realized that I always wanted poetry to be a part of my life. But who plans to be a poet as a career? And what if my poetry never left my notebook? A lot of people write just for themselves, not to share with the world. Also, in most Black households the life goal is a 9 to 5 job with benefits. So when I turned eighteen I made a promise to myself with this tattoo to always write, no matter the day job. I got it at a hole-in-the-wall parlor in Spanish Harlem. The definition of bard is poet or one who recites in the oral tradition. Consequently when I have writer's block, I tell myself to snap out of it because of this tattoo! (eventually it works)

Cynthia shared the following poem, which originally appeared in Nine Mile Magazine, Spring 2017, Vol 4:

In My Heaven

after RC Lewis

Everything begins with

hunger. Some crave Bartlett

pears, trees that breathe,

playing violin on gold roads.

Others only answer to their

animal names, knowing

which heart chamber calls

to the wolf, the sheep,

the jackal. In my heaven

the currency is words–

people sing or recite

verb to noun to buy

burgers and cake, furniture

like wide screen TVs

that show favorite programs

on loop with no commercials-

Soul Train, I Dream of Jeanie,

and Happy Days.

Each corner of heaven

is guarded by statues

of poets. They hold pens

as spears. When you rub

their stoned feet, you hear

dialects-dipped in Marian

Anderson arias.

In my heaven Ms. Rose

plays the numbers

and hits every week.

Our shadows talk to other

shadows, have smoke-shaped

tea or whiskey at noon.

They visit bonfires

to show their best forms

in the light. When you turn

18, 35 or 68 in my heaven,

you lay on a bed of tobacco

and ivy leaves, and the stems

shelter as you watch stars

fade into each other.

~ ~ ~

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). A Pushcart nominee with a MFA in Creative Writing from the New School; she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Poets House, MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center among others. Manick serves as East Coast Editor of the independent press Jamii Publishing and is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue. A winner of the 2016 Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry and a 2017 Barbara Memorial Fund Award for Poetry, her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day Series, African American Review, Bone Bouquet, Callaloo, Muzzle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Thanks to Cynthia for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Amie Whittemore's Milkweed (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Amie Whittemore, who shared this tattoo:

Amie tells us:

"My milkweed pod tattoo was my first tattoo and one I thought about for over a year before getting inked. I wanted something that represented my connection to my home state of Illinois and my love of the prairie. Milkweed is one of my favorite native flowers. Its mauve blooms with their summer-sweet scent, its seed pods, its elegant seeds all enchant me: I spent my childhood autumns opening the pods that lined the ditches near my house, sending seeds across cornfield and pasture.

I also wanted a tattoo that represented a spirit of rebirth and perpetual growth—the seeds spread up my arm and I look forward to adding more to the design at some point. I was nervous about getting this tattoo, not only because it was my first, but also because there are no good milkweed tattoos on the web to use as a model. Fortunately, my artist, Captain Morgan (@capnmorgan13) at Acme Tattoo and Piercing in Charlottesville, VA, agreed with me and worked from some sketches and photographs I brought in. The minute I saw the design I knew it was a perfect blending of my vision with his craft.

Captain Morgan is now working out of Tantrum Tattoo (@tantrumtattoo) in Petersburg, Virginia.

Amie added that, "In addition to getting tattoos inspired by the prairie, I write poems about it." The poem she sent us, about one of her other favorite flowers, the Prairie Onion, was originally published in F(r)iction, Issue 6:

Prairie Onion

Lavender globe, oversized lollipop, bobble-

headed dancer, I desire your frowzy shazam.

So glam, even after death. Bleached and fragile.

I kept your desiccate heads in a vase for years,

transposing meadow into hipster decor.

All you require is dirt, rocks, sugaring of sunshine.

I’d like to find a phalanx of you and lie below,

mooning over a purple planet sky. Discard modern life:
groceries, desks, screens—their companionate plumping.
Hitch to the caterpillar’s scam and cocoon to you,

stalk-latched, dreaming wings. Proboscis to sip you clean.

~ ~ ~

AmieWhittemore is the author of the poetry collection Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press) and co-founder of the Charlottesville Reading Series in Virginia. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Sycamore Review, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.

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

To see our entire list of poets over the last ten years, please visit www.tattooedpoets.com.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Jeevika Verma - dark, darker (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Jeevika Verma (@_jeevika), who generously shared several tattoos with us.

Photo via Instagram

Jeevika tells us:

"I wrote a poem titled 'dark, darker' in Rome. It was the summer of 2016, and I was part of an intensive one-month creative writing program organized by the University of Washington. I’d spent the month thinking deeply about what it meant to delve deeper into the unknown, and how the truth often exists in what cannot be seen. Plus, I was one of the only POC in my program, and I was constantly aware of how my brownness played into my relationship with my classmates, and my relationship with Europe. I got this tattoo to commemorate my last day in Rome."

She also shared this shot from Instagram above her knee, "alluding to the bray of Sylvia Plath’s heart 'I am, I am, I am' ”:

Photo via Instagram

Jeevika also sent us this photo of her arm, which has several tattoos:

Jeevika elaborates about the four tattoos seen on her left arm above:

" 'this,' is the first tattoo I got. I got it at a shop in Mumbai when I was 18, and just about to start college. I designed it to make it look like it’s part of a larger sentence, like there’s something more to be said before and after the word. 'this,' reminds me to stay in the present. Plus, I love playing with the word 'this'. When people ask me what my favorite tattoo is, I point to it, and say 'this.'

Surrounded by 'this,' are all the the things that help me remember who I am. A full moon rules my zodiac sign, in Cancer. A prickly pear is my soul-plant. Two hands open like wings, together, but each a separate entity."

She credited Randi Ftizpatrick (@probmchild) at Osprey Tattoo (@ospreytattoo) in Seattle with the hands, MKNZ (@ruffenough) from Valentine's Tattoo (@valentinestattoo) in Seattle with the cactus, and Gia (@giactattoo) at Fatty's Tattoos (@fattystattoosandpiercings) in Washington, DC, with the moon tattoo.

Jeevika shared the following poem, "dark, darker," alluded to in the first tattoo above. It was first published in Cleaver Magazine on March 22, 2017:

dark, darker

when I frown

into this mirror

a depth takes

my forehead

inside there is a little white man

sitting straight

working hard

flipping through

pages used unused

these are records

of me fighting gravity

like that one time

I did not kneel before

him

should I find a floor that will not reflect

how my teeth have shattered against it for centuries

like that one time

should I lay a drape over my upright head

the white in my eye has grown very yellow anyway

but the shadow of the obelisk is bent this way

I could grab that neck

twist it so

all the white drips

out

folds

into my lap

and collects

like the sweat

on my bare brown back

away from the mirror

there is no white here

I know

~ ~ ~

Jeevika says we "can also find poet Nikesh Murali's beautiful reading of [the] poem here."

Jeevika Verma is a poet from India with a passion for radical honesty. She graduated from the University of Washington in December 2016 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Before college, she lived in Cameroon (Yaoundé), which is where she founded her own creative-literary journal Creative Chaos. Her work has been featured in NPR, Kajal Magazine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, Susie Magazine, and more. She also curated and edited the “Loving” Anthology, as well as five short zines, titled Turns, Cuts, Grate, Long Distance Newsletters, and Scale(s). Find Jeevika’s complete portfolio at jeevikav.com.

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

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Matt Amott's Locomotive (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Matt Amott, who sent us this amazing tattoo:

Photo by Megan Bean

Matt tells us:

The train is the image of Locomotive #5 of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad. This was a railroad that ran between Nevada City, Grass Valley and Colfax California from the late 1800's until the early years of WWII. These cities were mining and lumber towns in the west foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in California, about an hour east of Sacramento. I spent my childhood summers there with my cousin and as an adult I lived there for a number of years. Always a fan of trains since I was a kid, I loved learning the history of the NCNGRR and I thought this tattoo would be a great representation of my passion for trains while paying tribute to the history of a place I lived. The tattoo was done by Cory Norris (@corynorrisart) of Classic Tattoo, which is also in Grass Valley, Ca.

Matt sent us this poem, as well, which was previously published in THE COAST IS CLEAR (Six Ft. Swells Press):

ZEPHYR

Standing on the platform

watching the train roll to a stop.

The locomotive massive,

bright, shiny, silver,

like an old Airstream trailer

the folks would load

with their belongings

and drag across the country

looking for a brighter future.

I see it's strength

in sleek lines

running up the side

all the way to the front.

The engineer views the world

through windows

resembling squinting eyes,

drawn tight from looking at miles

of desert plains and rocky grades.

I make my way down the string of cars

until a weathered old man

with a pocket watch

and a lifetime of railroad stories asks,

"Are you Chicago bound?"

My reply, a nod.

"Well son, hop on board."

And that's

as simple

as it gets

to just leave.

~ ~ ~

Matt Amott is a poet, musician and photographer who rambles around the Pacific Northwest. He is co-founder and co-editor of Six Ft. Swells Poetry Press and has been published in numerous collections as well as two books of his own, THE COAST IS CLEAR (Six Ft. Swells Press) and GET WELL SOON (Epic Rites Press). Matt's turn-ons included pre-1978 custom Dodge vans, OP/Lightning Bolt apparel, shirts with numbers, cords, heavy fuzz, deep Blues, heart-wrenching Soul, record players, CB radios, postcards, Kung Fu movies, Logan's Run, patches/iron-ons and longboards. He can be reached and purchases made at afterhourspoetry.com.

Thanks to Matt for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

To see our entire list of poets over the last ten years, please visit www.tattooedpets.com.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Kathleen Peirce on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Kathleen Peirce, who sent us the following photo of her ink:

Kathleen tells us:

"This tattoo is the tail end of the sleeve on my left arm. It was done by Katja Ramirez (@katjaramirez), at Rock of Ages Tattoo (@rockofagestattoo) in Austin, Texas. The phoenix feathers are in the Japanese tradition, signaling rebirth, and the yellow flowers are Mexican marigolds, which light the way for the dead in Mexican tradition."

The following poem, "Handihorse," is an unpublished work from the manuscript for Kathleen's 6th book, Lion's Paw.

Handihorse

Dollar for dollar, what did that
ever mean? A man wrote I grew up
dirt poor and hunted/fished for food. Don’t kill
anything you’re not going to eat. I do not have it in me
to kill anything anymore. Maybe a fish now and then.
She would put, my beautiful best friend, her thumb and first finger down
on my desk at school, fourth grade, then add her pinky and her ring, bobbing
her middle finger above the earth, making of her hand
a little animal to amble over,
whose lowered head would touch my hand
while she made the sniffing sound. I’d make one of myself
and go to her. Never did we think to make
four animals at once. Now I see Handihorse for sale, four toy hooves
for fingertips and a finger pony head, to make the same thing true
but without beauty. My friend
and her tumor are together forever now. When I go past
my big fish tank, I see and feel the Betta wait. I put my finger in
and he arrives again. Neither of us
is what we are. Something wavers toward and we touch.

~ ~ ~

Kathleen Peirce is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Vault, from New Michigan Press. Her work has been awarded The AWP Award, The Iowa Prize, and The William Carlos Williams Award, and was a finalist for The LA Times Book Award. Her work has been supported by the National Foundation for the Arts, The Giles Whiting Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches poetry in MFA program at Texas State University.

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

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Rajiv Mohabir Helps Launch Our Tenth Year of the Tattooed Poets Project

It is amazing to me that we are in our tenth April, celebrating tattooed poets during National Poetry Month.

We're launching this year's parade of poets with a special contribution from Rajiv Mohabir!

Rajiv sent us two tattoos, beginning with this one, on his forearm:

He tells us:

"The square tattoo is in honor of my Aji, Gangadai Mohabir (my paternal grandmother) who mothered thirteen children in Guyana. It was a long-time tradition for people, and especially Bhojpuri women, to tattoos their husbands’ names on their forearms. There was a belief that people’s names held magic, that by using someone’s name you would disrespect them by giving their power away. My family’s naming traditions are mystical still, albeit changed somewhat.

Here’s a photo of my Aji’s tattoo:

My Aji tattooed her husband’s name (Sewdass) on her arm with and Om above it, so when people asked who her husband was—which seldom happened in the small village of Crabwood Creek—she would be able to show them. My Aja did not have my Aji’s name tattooed on his arm though.

Tattoos were thought to be important, signifying social standing. My tattoo is also in homage to this tradition of 'godna' and the Devanagari script says my ancestors’ names in four generations in the shape of a square. The names are Chandranarine, Sewdass, Mahabir, and Lachchman.

People ask why I don’t tattoo my own name on my arm. My answer is always 'It’s on my

skin—that’s my contribution.'

Rajiv also shared this tattoo:

Rajiv explained:

"Since this is so hetero-patriarchal and on my right arm (cosmologically significant for the masc energies of the body in Vedantic thought), I thought to balance out my energies by tattooing a lotus yantra with the word 'Ma' in the center to keep the women I descend from touching my heart. The left side of the body is believed to be the femme side. My mother was low-key offended that I didn’t have her on my arm. But I told her I have you all over my poems, which will exist longer than my skin. Did I mention that I’m a huge mama’s boy?"

Rajiv shared the following poem, which appears below in its original form in Guyanese Bhojpuri, followed by his translation:

Godna

godna walle ta bulawe
aur baja pe aike kantak leke
hathwa ke juk-juk kare hai
ho rama
hathwa ke juk-juk angrej mein hai
angrej deswa mein inglis bole
hamar paglapan bhulo lalana
ho rama
nu yack mein godna lagal saanwar,
hamar hath pe ii godna lagal,
aapan khandaan-chhap lagal
ho rama
tohar nam likhal hai pitrwa
aapan chamriya pe ajawa
gulaab kantak se nam nam likhal hai
ho rama
koi gaaye walle nahin rahi ohar
jab khoon nikal lage rahi, dard lage rahi
koi rahi nahin dardwa uthaiyeke
ho rama
Kaise bhulye aapan dukh-sukh bhala
kantak ke nisaanwa rahejai
hamar dohe gaayke bataihai
ho rama
kaun jaane hamar muluk
kahan kahan hai hamar gaon
galli galli ghumeli galli galliya
ho rama
kaun batawe kahan kahan pe
ghumeke hai, Rama Rahim ke khoj mein,
kaun bataihe hamar deswa andar hai
ho rama

Godna

You call the tattoo artist
to your door who comes with his needles
to poke your arm

ho Rama
His scoring your skin is in English
In English country speak English
forget my madness

ho Rama
In New York I mark my dark skin
on my arm I inked
the signature of my descent
ho Rama
Your name he wrote, dear ancestor
on my flesh, dear Aja
with a rose’s thorn he wrote your name
ho Rama
No singer played a folksong
when blood erupted and pain began
no song to ease the hurt
ho Rama
Who knows where my country is
where my village is
from gulley to gulley I roam
ho Rama
Who will tell me exactly where
I must wander, searching out Rama-Rahim
Who will tell me my nation is inside me
ho Rama

~ ~ ~

Rajiv Mohabir is the author of The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press 2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books 2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017). In 2015 he was a winner of the AWP Intro Journals Award. His poetry appears and is forthcoming from journals like POETRY, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, and Prairie Schooner. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from at Queens College, CUNY and his PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of poetry at Auburn University. To read more of his work, visit www.rajivmohabir.com.

A hearty thank you to Rajiv for his contribution and his participation in the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog)

Saturday, April 7, 2018

FKA René and Christ the Redeemer (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Friday, April 6, 2018

Cynthia Manick and the Bard on The Tattooed Poets Project

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Amie Whittemore's Milkweed (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Jeevika Verma - dark, darker (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Matt Amott's Locomotive (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Monday, April 2, 2018

Kathleen Peirce on the Tattooed Poets Project

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Rajiv Mohabir Helps Launch Our Tenth Year of the Tattooed Poets Project

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