Lynne DeSilva-Johnson's Body of Work on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our final tattooed poet in April is Lynne DeSilva-Johnson.

I've been talking to Lynne about contributing for over four years, and I finally met her last summer at the annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governor's Island.

Here are some of Lynne's tattoos:

Lynne explains:

"The hand tattoos are from 2007. On my left hand is an eye, radiating out -- the all seeing eye combined with the classic symbolism of eye-in-hand, familiar via the Hamsa in particular, and ancient to both Jews and Arabs in the middle east. The all seeing eye, unfortunately connecting us too frequently to illuminati or other ridiculousness, is actually an ancient esoteric visual symbolizing divine light and our connection to it as divine beings. It is consistent in all ancient religions/sacred imagery, predating organized religion but carrying into all faiths. On the right hand is a human heart, similarly radiant. In energy work and healing, it is believed that the left hand receives energy/is negatively charged, 'allows things to happen,' and that the right hand is positively charged/emits energy, 'makes things happen.' My hands symbolize (and stand as a constant reminder to me, and a point of public dialogue) that while we receive light and information via our minds eye/senses, that it must be translated in the body and find a home in the heart, that decisions and actions should come in through the eye but channel out, to the world, through the heart. In keeping with this, I used the following image, (ceremonial rattlesnake disk, found in Moundsville, Alabama) on the cover of my first chapbook, Ground. (2012)"

Lynne also gave us a view of her body of work:

Lynne elaborates:

"All the tattoos you see are from the same artist! Alex Sherker. He is amazing. You can find him at Wizard Mountain Tattoo, and often as a visiting artist at shops all over the US, and NZ. Oh wait, not the split star on the wrists...  They're from around 2004 - and were done at Flyrite, 3 blocks from my childhood home and 1 block from my family's old house in Brooklyn. My old partner (now deceased) had the same split stars. They were slightly altered in scale for our different wrists but you couldn't tell when we put them together. The thinking was that you are never a half -- you are always a whole by yourself (complete your own star), but when you join in partnership with another person, you create a new whole. The totally anti-ownership/tagging version of a relationship tattoo. We always said that our future partners, or children, or friends could in fact also get the same piece (still a possibility!) to indicate the new wholes created with our knowing and sharing with each other.

On my back, in the plaque area, in white (hard to see, this tattoo is pretty old at this point) is a quote from Sartre, in French, but which translates to 'have no illusions and do only what you can' -- a bit of a mantra of sorts for many years about balance and duality in life and work , which I always took to mean, boiled down, 'give yourself a break while kicking your own ass.' I got this as I was in a bit of a divorce with the illusions I'd had about academia and the relationship of disciplinary scholarship to ontology and enlightenment, as well as to a necessary distancing from the former partner, who battled opiate and alcohol addictions. It was a bittersweet reclaiming the core of my intentions/desires, as well as a leaving behind a lot of what I thought my life would hold. The female figures are not angels, a common confusion, but rather are from two paintings of Alphonse Mucha -- the left is from his panel representing 'the arts,' this figure being 'Dance' (from 1898) and the right representing 'spring,' from another panel painting of the seasons. I was always very entranced by art nouveau, its marriage of biological/botanical forms and the new technologies of the modern moment -- steel and glass and concrete. As with most back tattoos, and the ceiling of the UN, this is perennially unfinished -- there was a whole plan for botanical and architectural elements surrounding what you see now...!

Somewhere, on the neck, near the nautical star, on a ribbon it also reads 'to thine own self be true,' gotten the day I left a job I felt I had shrunk down and diminished myself to stay at -- a reminder to never do that again (and, by and large, I've kept to that promise!)
On my biceps are tattoos for my daughter, Beckett -- Love Always, on my right, Beckett Rose, on my left. From 2010. My daughter was born in February 2010, conceived manually in a room by myself, the daughter of me and a gay couple, Matthew and Dan, long time friends of a good friend of mine. She was adopted by them fully (the only legal option) in May of 2010. On the day of her adoption I sat for 8 or more hours in Carnegie Hall listening to the Dalai Lama talk about the Bodhisattva path, non attachment, duality, and enlightenment, what I seek here in every way. I do not believe that this legal document controls or defines our relationship, and I continue to be very much her 'Mama Lynne,' a constant part in her life. These tattoos are a reminder for me that I carry her with me every day, and that love is never about ownership or title, love is never about volume of time but quality of that time, of intention and attention and consciousness and being a model for her of the possibilities of family, parenthood, self-hood. 

Shoulders, most recent, are my design in collaboration with Alex - lotus based epaulets, traditionally a military symbol, here transformed with lotus -- symbol of peace, enlightenment, and our path through the mud into bloom -- I call them my spirit warrior epaulets, because indeed I am fighting a battle everyday here, not only of my own but in my community, humbly hoping to improve this place." 

Lynne also shared the following poem:

NOVENA

two swing in unison, one opposing;

the sun's warmth a surprise

amongst fallen leaves, so that

every arm is graced by

unnecessary jacket, armor

for what we thought was coming.

their dog will not pose

for the camera, her every hair on its end,

her nose an antenna for the infinite scents

alit on the wind, on whispers

from the sky's million and one mouths.

look up: that blue is bigger

than anything you can imagine.

why can you feel this wind

on your face, why hear the insistent

caw of unseen birds? the grace

of these mathematics, demurring

behind the face of the mundane --

this is divinity.

I'll write this poem whenever I can,

over and over again

until I die

and what I see before me

will never grow old, will

never cease to be

miracle.

~ ~ ~

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson is a willful subject feminist killjoy queer official-narrative battler making her way through image, text, and code in the world, currently stationed in Brooklyn, NY. She runs the self-hacking arts organization/press The Operating System, and is an Assistant Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute.

You can find her on the web in these various locales:

http://lynne-desilva-johnson.strikingly.com
http://theoperatingsystem.org
twitter.com/@onlywhatican
twitter.com/@the_OS_
instagram: @thetroublewithbartleby, @the_operating_system

You can also enjoy this recent interview with her: http://culturedesigners.com/the-operating-system-detournement-radical-documentation-with-lynne-desilva-johnson/

Thanks to Lynne for sharing her poem and tattoos with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Jane Crown on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Jane Crown, who shared this tattoo:

Jane credited an English artist named Oliver from Pulse Tattoos on St.Peter's Way, in Northampton, England. The "M" placed on the back of her neck, she explained, "is to serve the memory of such goodness in her brother whom died." She added, "the lettering is further a nod to the individual whom she spent her year abroad with,whom made her brave enough to leave home for that long."

Jane sent us the following poem:

A & E

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality.
But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty,
socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude".
- Alexis de Tocqueville

Nearly six in the morning, lungs do not tell time the

way night does. You employ guileless steps in the

ambulance of how to be stroppy with your wheezing.

You use your eyes, roll them unapprovingly towards

the notion of dying in a vehicle as they drive slower

towards help. Sickness when it has an American

accent, even if not heard fully, truly annoys some

foreigners. You sit ready to plead your case before

doctors and staff once steel doors lament you upon

inner sanctum. You feel satonic jabs of blood

tests in lieu of betterment to breathe. Jokes help

as you have pasties with leads of snakes, making

your breasts freeze behind paper curtains barely

cosied in chagrin. Machines go inky dark, turn

into undignified balloons, not made for health

or virtue. You boyfriend is on the way, but he's

late, him and his white horse now stippled brown.

You lay your head down in the unit, finally a bed.

It's been eleven harrowing hours misting in

corridors of agony alone. An orderly tells you

to close your eyes, this new world of peaceful

innovation is yours. The room is filled with deciduous

eyes, Mother comes to mind. You miss her lap, her

worrying for you, as you carry on your life inconsiderate

of hers. They discharge you cleanly in two day's time,

giving you standing orders you comply to your

confidence, all will be all right. Nothing so calming

as a puff of air in a can. Grateful at last you are for

strict Socialism bought with government currency.

You've only paid with one long journey in a first class

seat, paralleled with your expatriot boldness to

procure and exploit its expediency. Hateful are the

strangers, your brand new emergency family.

~ ~ ~

Jane Crown is an award-winning author and American archivist. Her published books include Her
Delicate Shoe (Polymer Grove Press) and A Love Letter to Darwin (Lummox Press). She is the
Publishing Editor of Heavy Bear Journal and Host for Jane Crown's Poetry Radio Show. She
is currently working on her 3rd book of poems after a year's trip abroad entitled,This Little Room.
Her further publications, audio archives and books can be found by a simple search engine.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Athena's Owl on Jennifer Martelli (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Jennifer Martelli, who shared this photo with us:

She tells us:

"I got this tattoo down in Hyannis, Massachusetts, at a great shop called Spilt Milk. A wonderful tattoo artist named Pablo did my very first tattoo there while I was on vacation, so when I returned a few years later, that’s where I went. I chose this design for a few reasons: first, I love owls (and cats—that beauty is Maria); second, this is Athena’s owl, and I love the fact that Athena was birthed from her father’s head; I love that she was a war goddess, that she wore a girdle made of snakes, and that she remained a virgin—all things that frighten me! My owl is consistent with two of my other tattoos, which are drawn with one single line in black ink. The only color tattoo I have is my purple Alzheimer’s ribbon on my wrist, in memory of my mother (that’s a whole different story)."

The poem Jennifer chose to accompany this tattoo is called, “Inversals,” and it was published in [PANK] last fall:

Inversals

I.

A woman, made famous after fellating a powerful man, dreams of Francis Ford Coppola’s oranges tearing a hole through her brown sack, bouncing past the crow perched on the curb cawing: Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Dreams of an orange slice covering the teeth of an old man with one bad eye under the black grape vineyard.  Of the rind pared off with a sharp knife into a perfect coil. Of the sections pulled apart like small bloody lungs, each an aspirated sigh. The oranges portend death by deals and death by bullets and death by garrote and lightning bolts. Dreams she excretes a senator a president a judge a river a volcano in Sicily.  She thinks, if only a mandolin played in the background of my life, it would be far less nuanced.  She’d eat black olives and fresh cheese; rice; sip espresso in bone demitasse. There would be windows in badly painted rooms, thick with white leaded paint. People would fall from the windows and she’d call them suicides or hopeful for some believed they could fly.  If a mandolin played, the fall would be profound. She’d look up from her lunch she’d spread on the lawn by the black grape vineyard:  the thick mozzarella, the squid ink vermicelli, the plums.

II.

While at a poetry reading, she ponders how some women are born from their father’s heads and ask to remain virgins forever. Bunny Putnam, great-great-great-grandson of witch hunters and witch accusers, a man secure enough to be called Bunny, has a plaque on the wall at the Athenaeum, across from the bookshelves where the taxidermied owls sit, dusty. Women born from their fathers’ heads take on the worst aspects of their fathers: they brood like owls, awake all night and they hunt so silently any maps or photos taped to the wall fall off.  Or, fuses blow and a darkness drops so sudden you wonder, Did I die? or Am I truly not here? which is what the case is: truly, you are not here. Or truly, you did die because the sirens are wailing outside the Athenaeum. No one likes sitting in a pitch black room. No one likes crouching inside a hollow skull. Athena grew inside Zeus’s head and poked the bone plates with her spear until his pain caused lightning storms all over the North Shore. He swore never to swallow a woman again, even if he was caught philandering. She’d assumed Bunny was a woman, especially when trying to decide if she was here, or there, or with the owls. How strong he must have been to earn that moniker, Bunny: the gentlest, horniest beast of all that God made, the easiest prey.

~ ~ ~

Jennifer Martelli’s debut poetry collection, The Uncanny Valley, was published in 2016 by Big Table Publishing Company. She is also the author of the chapbook, Apostrophe and the chapbook, After Bird, forthcoming from Grey Book Press. Her work has appeared in Thrush, [Pank], Glass Poetry Journal, The Heavy Feather Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly, as well as a co-curator for The Mom Egg VOX Blog Folio.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Stephen Shimmans and His Owl on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Stephen Shimmans, who shared this wonderful tattoo:

Stephen told us "I chose this tattoo design as I consider myself solitary, and possess many qualities associated with the owl ... Wisdom, sharp eyes, graceful and determined."

He shared the following poem, "Battle Grounds," as well: 

Temples have been razed to the ground

Idols have perished in the vapid heat of orange flames.

Tongues severed, men crucified in the arid desert.

Waning clemency a virtuous humanisation.

It casts a pall like a pale veil that enshrouds.

Gifting both intriguing mystery and smokeless ignorance.

Clicking triggers

Triggers clicking.

Blanc

Blank

Mars    Zeus    Odin

Under the glimmering belt of Orion

Ursus roar

Savage animal is man

Behest of any redemption or realisation

Dishonour and faux camaraderie

Watch the setting sun sink below

Twilight

Swinging and swooning on the star strings.

The arrows fly yet bite

The sword gleams but kills

Renders flesh

Cleaving limbs

Crushing bones.

Called to King

To die for country.

The reaping reavr reaps that which he shall sow

Seeds of wheat and buck

The ale inebriates, dulls life pain

Dull mendacity sour despair and disbelief.

Father-less child

Retreat in defeat.

Blood soaked emblems flap defiantly against a cold breeze.

Brothers who fell in battle shall love nevermore.

The reaper calls with scythe in hand,

To collect the bounty,

To collect the wood from our crosses we bear.

~ ~ ~

Stephen Shimmans tells us he is a 29- year old father of three boys and "married to the most wonderful woman on earth." He likes to spend time wrestling with the children and exploring local country parks. He completed a degree in English and Creative Writing at Salford University in greater Manchester, UK. He has had a pamphlet of poetry, entitled Roots,  published with Erbacce Press.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Kathleen Szoke's Blue Jay on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Kathleen Szoke, a Canadian poet with a stunning tattoo:

Kathleen tells us about her lovely blue jay tattoo:

"[It]  is in memory of an experience I had several years ago.  At a weekend retreat, we were asked to write a journal entry about owning our truth, and speaking out about what we wanted.  I wrote a piece about being a poet, owning that, and saying, 'I'm a poet.'  I had been ambivalent in the past about stating that, instead of just, 'Oh, I write poems sometimes, it's a hobby.'  We were taking turns reading our pieces, and the reaction I got was extremely enthusiastic, more than I expected.  The others explained that what I didn't know was that just after I started to speak, a blue jay appeared on a tree outside the window behind me.  It stayed until I finished speaking, and then flew away.  I never saw it myself, as it was behind me, over my left shoulder, which is where my blue jay sits now forever.  Unfortunately, the written piece was one of many things lost in a fire, so all I have left of that experience is the tattoo."

Kathleen credited the artist Carol at Sinkin Ink (@sinkin_ink) in Hamilton, Ontario, with this lovely blue jay.

Kathleen sent us the following poem to accompany her tattoo:

Witness

The blue jay called to me today
raucous and shrill
from the still barren lilacs
rising above the fence
outside the kitchen window.
He appears there sometimes
or on the old birch tree
perched at the very top
caws his discordant song.

He sat behind my shoulder once
beyond my sight
in the branches of another tree
outside another window
listened as I spoke truths
I only half believed.
When I finished
he flew away.

He stops by
on occasion
to remind me.

~ ~ ~

Kathleen Szoke is a poet writing in Burlington, Ontario.  She has been published in Canadian literary journals, such as The Antigonish Review,  The Dalhousie Review, and the American/Canadian journal The Great Lakes Review.  She has read her poetry at the Eden Mills Writer's Festival, the Kingston Artfest, and other local venues.  She sits on the executive of the Hamilton Poetry Centre, and is an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets.  She published a chapbook, Heavenly Blue, in 2011.

Thanks to Kathleen for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Paul Hlava and a Ring on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Paul Hlava, who sent us this photo:

This is a simple tattoo, with a simple explanation.

"I had just gotten married, and my partner and I wanted something to mark the occasion, Paul explained. He went to Graceland Tattoo in Brooklyn, noting "We both liked the simplicity of a geometric shape and all the metaphors and implications of a circle, or ring."

Paul shared the following poem, as well:

Pendulum, Balance Wheel, Escape

Because I live in a clocktower

time moves in reverse.

When I eat I am hungry,

when I wake, the golden weight

dances at the end of its chain.

Gears twist like reptilian

claws of ospreys

planting fish in the sea.

The bells ring twice, once

in the distance and once inside.

The moon is rising just so.

I’m the steady center

of a spinning world.

Every triumph I will achieve is memory.

My daughters walked out on me

before they were born.

Undeveloped photos hang on the wall.

The apples have been moved

to another room. 

~ ~ ~

Paul Hlava's poetry has appeared in Narrative Magazine, the PEN Poetry Series, Acentos Review, and Best New Poets, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA from New York University and was a Poets House Fellow. He now lives in Seattle. Visit him at www.paulhlava.com.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Matthew Guenette on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Matthew Guenette:

Matthew sent me a few photos and I selected this one because, he explained:

"...THAT tattoo was given to me by the incredible poet (and tattoo artist) Ruth Awad. I was in Carbondale at the time, for a reading, and Ruth gave me and the poet Traci Brimhall free tattoos to commemorate our time there. Ruth did the tattoos in her apartment, in her kitchen if I remember correctly. My tattoo is a '33', with the second '3' reversed, thus creating a kind of '8' that one might also read as an infinity symbol. 33 is how old I was when I got married; a few months later, still 33, my mother died. That the tattoo also makes something of an '8' is for August, the name of my son. I love this tattoo...That it evokes an infinity symbol allows me to pour into the tattoo any number of meanings..."

Ruth Awad appeared on the Tattooed Poets Project last year, here, and the tattoo she gave Traci Brimhall appeared back in 2012 here.

Matthew sent us the following poem, as well:

I Will Not Mention Him

I will not mention his small-handed excuses.

His covetous old-man-ness.

His blundering baboon-blood.

I will not mention his locker-room banter.

His ugly, ill-fitting suits.

I won’t mention his paid thugs, his goons who hit below the belt.

I won’t mention what he said about your mother.

How he wants to sue her.

How he called her a drunk.

I will not mention what he claimed in Pensacola; Toledo; Kinston, NC; Gettysburg; Delaware, OH; Portsmouth, NH; West Palm Beach; Greensboro; and I especially won’t mention what he claimed in Jackson, MS; in Birmingham; or in South Carolina and Iowa.

I will not mention all that stinks about him like a flooded creek.

I will not mention what he said about women and where he likes to grab them.

I will not mention what he said about Muslims.

I will not mention what he said about Syrians.

I will not mention what he said about Mexicans and walls.

What he said about Asians and deals.

What he said about black lives.

I won’t mention every racist little bone in his body.

His heartless heart.

His bat-shit tweets at 3 a.m. for his hooting rabblement and their chapped hands.

I won’t mention the drought in his brain or the cricket in the basement of his brain chirping somewhere behind an empty box.

I won’t mention his 30,000 fears and corruptions.

I won’t mention his recurring dream where, in flames, he rides his tongue like a deranged horse into the valley.

It’s so beautiful outside. Isn’t it lovely?

~ ~ ~

Matthew Guenette is the author of three full length poetry collections: Vasectomania (U. of Akron Press, 2017), American Busboy (U. of Akron Press, 2011), and Sudden Anthem (Dream Horse Press, 2008). He is also the author of the chapbook Civil Disobedience (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in numerous journals and reviews. He has had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hessen-Wisconsin Fellowship. A graduate of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University, Matt currently teaches composition and creative writing at Madison College in Madison, WI, where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a 20 lb cat named Butternut. 

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Risa Denenberg, Two Fish, and a Yellow Star (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Today's tattooed poet is Risa Deneberg, who shared this astrological tattoo:

Risa tells us:

"My single permanent tattoo is on my right inner arm and is a Pisces (two fish). The story of that tattoo goes back to the 90's in the East Village, when the cops finally managed to evict a drug dealer from the store beneath my apartment. The new tenant was a tat artist. I wanted to welcome him to the neighborhood, so I was his first customer. I love tattoos, but am reluctant to get more on my now aging skin."

Risa also shared the following photo of a temporary tattoo that she uses as her profile picture and also hands out at book fairs:

I saved Risa's post for today because the poem she submitted is appropriate for the observance of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts at sundwon. The poem was originally published in Lavender Review in 2011:

Yellow Star

In my case, the yellow star
will be made of two perfect pink triangles
cut from cheap dry goods at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
where the women
sew stars on at the ready
hunched over their Singers
and, not wasting time on stairs,
work right up to closing time, then jump.

They didn’t want to die so young
and neither did the gay boys who died in droves
at the close of the last century. I would be one
who would beg you to shoot me
who would know that borders lie
that I could not endure the march through the woods
in the snow to the trains at the end.

We who say never forget
also know that it could happen again
to us
and we do not know more now
than we did then
how to make it stop.

The stitching never ends. For practice,
I have sutured my arm to my sleeve
with triangles made from pages torn
from the Book of Job.

~ ~ ~

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She is an editor at Headmistress Press, an independent publisher of poetry by lesbians. She has published three chapbooks, and two full length books, most recently, Whirlwind @ Lesbos (Headmistress Press, 2016). Her collection “A Slight Faith” is forthcoming in 2018 from MoonPath Press. She blogs at http://risadenenberg.weebly.com.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Keri Smith on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet today is Keri Smith, who sent in the photo:

Check out the hand emerging from the rose. Keri explains:

"This tattoo on my leg, of the hand holding the pen, was given to me by Mike Taylor in his loft in Bushwick last August. Mike has been making a great zine called Late Era Clash forever, and has been one of my favorite artists for a long time. Mike recently told me he was working on getting all of his screen printed zines into a cheap art book because if his work wasn't accessible to people with less money or less access to the art world then it wasn't really art.

The zine Mike used to do in Gainesville was called Scenery and in one of the issues (it's
a graphic zine) there's a story about some radical punks burning down a condominium going up in a low income neighborhood. Along with some academic language about gentrification, the zine had a big impact on me a young teenager. I asked Mike what he thought about gentrification while he tattooed me, since we were artists sitting in a loft in Bushwick. He said as an artist and as an art teacher he tried to do what he could and make good choices. He referenced a bar around the corner that had been owned by an older Hispanic man for decades, who had been trying to get his liquor license forever. He was denied, but the white tenants who took over the space got it and were able to open a bar. He said he would never go there, and that's where the line about arbitrary battles shows up. I think about it a lot, and luckily, still get to see Mike often too."

Keri shared the following poem which references Mike and her tattoo:

Late Era Clash

While tattooing me you said
everyone's free to wage their arbitrary battles
while we talked about gentrification
you didn't mean the whole of Bushwick
or burning down condominiums
just that you wouldn't go to that new spot
on the corner
ever
I wanted a beer and went with my leg
all wrapped up and dripping it was August
and inside saw all the white punks drinking
imported beer and I paid my tab went home
alone and kind of got what you mean.

~ ~ ~

Originally from Gainesville, Florida, Keri Smith is finishing her MFA in Poetry at The New School
in New York City. She bartends at night at a few bars in Brooklyn and during the day works for
Hanging Loose Press. She has recently been published in The Inquisitive Eater online and in
Hanging Loose #108 in print. She intends to stay in New York after she graduates because the
used bookstores here make her swoon.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

BJ Love and Prince on the Tattooed Poets Project

On the first anniversary of Prince's death, we chose to share the following tattoo from our next tattooed poet, BJ Love:

BJ tells us:

"This is the first tattoo I got. It was just a few months after I started college. From the very first moment I considered getting a tattoo, I knew what I wanted. A few years prior to this, Prince had changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. From what I understand, he felt that Warner Bros. owned Prince; his songs, his name, his likeness, and his creative process. He wanted to be free from all that, so he adopted what had been calling the love symbol as his moniker. I loved the mystery of it, his odd enforcement in only referring to him as that symbol, and most of all, I was really into the music he was making in the early-to-mid 90's. So, in the fall of 1997 I walked into Eternal Ink in Waterloo, Iowa, with my copy of Prince's Emancipation record and just handed it to the artist when he asked what I wanted. I don't recall his name, but he had been a teacher and left his job after a few years of apprenticing to start tattooing full time. I really admired the fact that he found a passion, and the sacrifices he made to pursue it. 

Though I now have many tattoos, I've spent the last 20 years answering questions about this Prince tattoo. In most cases, I try to give it just a hint of the same mystery Prince had at that time, but if pressed, I'll tell you that I loved Prince, and that he preferred, for a time anyway, to be known as a symbol that meant 'love.' Having grown up with the last name Love, I thought that was pretty fucking rad, so, tattoo.

In the year leading up to his death, Prince was the soundtrack to a book of poems I was writing about faith and belief. Here is a poem from that collection that borrows the ending from 'My Computer,' on Emancipation."

The God our Yahweh has Left us (Homily)

The story still rings like an echo, still rings.

I want to lay down before this sunset, to slice open

each of my fingertips and drag them through

the sand just to see if I can make this last. To see

if I can capture the strange math that combines

these two into gold. The alchemy necessary

to make this light something I can hold.

Something I can keep. Yahweh, my Yahweh

I want this. I want what I’m sure is a part of you.

This, none of it, is law-abiding, is my abiding

your law. But it is beautiful and now I can have jars

of it, jars made of it. Sand plus a binding agent

(my blood) and voila! We created a pottery

that is something to behold, something to be held

something to do the bulk of our own holding.

Yahweh may have made me, but I made the pottery

and in this valley, and during this time, and on a day

when the sky bled on me first, what is more useful?

Are these not your laws? No. No. No, this is

but commentary. But commentary makes it

nonetheless important. Yahweh, I don’t know what

it is to be surrounded by the world, to be in it

so deeply you feel for nothing else, but I do know

what it is to look on it, to look on it and love the world

so much you hope to keep it all, you hope you can

keep it all, you hope it’s possible to bottle the world

as it is right now so you can take it home and show

everyone that there is a better life. A better life.

A better life. A better life. A better life. A better life.

A better life. A better life. A better life. Now, goodbye.

~ ~ ~

BJ Love is a 6th grade English teacher. Poems of his can be found in The North American Review, Hobart, Pinwheel Magazine, Sink Review, and Bodega Magazine, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he lives in Houston, TX, with his wife, the poet Erika Jo Brown, and their dog, Franklin.

Thanks to BJ for sharing his tattoo and poem with us on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.