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.

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