The Tattooed Poets Project: MK Chavez

Today's tattooed poet is MK Chavez:

Here's a closer look at that shoulder tattoo:

MK tells us:

"Idexa from Black & Blue Tattoo [in San Francisco] has done all the work on my body. We started with fox glove [detailed above], we've added a virgin, the symbol for Artemis, and the names of women who I love. The last tattoo that we made together emerged from a conversation and was done free hand."

MK sent us the following poem:


Temple of the Femina

Our womanhood is no gutter.

In the city of want we find ourselves
behind every door.

It takes a certain kind of injury
to create the sacrificial lamb.

            Dear Flower,
           
            We may find ourselves
             in a hot house of writhing
             body parts; a torso for art,
             a liver for anger.

We are hysterical. We are floating.
Un-rooted and free.

~ ~ ~

MK Chavez is a writer and a champion of public health. She writes about the world as it presents itself to her, broken and achingly luminous.

She is the author of Virgin Eyes (Zeitgeist Press). Mothermorphosis (Nomadic Press) was released in March 2016. Her full-length collection Dear Animal, which will be available in the fall.

Chavez is co-founder/co-curator of the Berkeley-based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and the co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She believes in literary confrontation and its capacity to an obliterate all forms of oppression.

Recent and upcoming work can be found in East Bay Review, Penumbra and Eleven Eleven.

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

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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