The Tattooed Poets Project: Sarah Cook

Today's tattooed poet is Sarah Cook who has a literary tattoo on her ribs:

Sarah tells us:

"This tattoo was done about a year ago, for my 28th birthday, by Jacob Hanks, who tattoos both in Portland, OR and out here at his smaller shop in The Dalles [Hanks Family Tattoo Co].

The line is from Anne Sexton's 'Hurry Up Please It's Time,' a poem that slays me with every single reading. My first relationship with Anne--high school years--felt traditional. I read her early stuff (Bedlam, All My Pretty Ones), and her confrontation of  'hard' subjects became a place of permission for me. I mean I can probably quote from Love Poems if put on the spot.

I grew out of her work as I developed my relationships with more contemporary writers and poetics, and then I came back to her and found entire new worlds of appreciation--the beautiful frenzied thinking she can accomplish within a sentence. Her later stuff, including what's been published after her death, is more patient, much sadder, more directly suspicious of god in a way that prevents her from ever setting god down.

She says, 'Abundance is scooped from abundance, / yet abundance remains.' It's a way to keep living."

Sarah also shared the following poem, which is from a longer series called Field Poems:

I wish I could look the field directly in the face but I’m forever below it

or rather, the field lacks

eye contact &

when feeling brave stares

straight in the direction of

possible love

& assumes

magic

with every face

that doesn’t look

away, i mean   it learned          at a young age              how to hesitate, this field

*

yr car is

a woman but yr man

is a house

                                                            just because yr outsides look like this

*

the quiet

field mistakes silence

for solitude & sets up

its own car insurance

policy commits to

walking everywhere

remains ignorant

of its

celebrity stronghold

*

it’s hard not

to fall in some

kind of lovespace

with every un-

hesitant pair of

eyeballs if you

see something, say

something                                like this field                i just can’t look away

                                                so         grass*belly*grass         there

                                                i said it

*

there’s nothing

between us at any

given moment but

clothes how

embarrassing

to go from

person to body

just like

that

*

misread “bruised”

as “buried” &

thought what’s

the difference

the weather isn’t fake

just controlled

& the field is just

far enough away

to not yet be thinking

about coming back

~ ~ ~

Sarah Cook is a poet. She lives in Oregon.

Thanks to Sarah for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

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

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