melanie kristeen's Orchids (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is melanie kristeen, who shared this phenomenal tattoo:

melanie gave us a little background on the tattoo:

"The tattoo on my left forearm is of a few orchids with water droplets and was done by Aleah Lauren (@iyamaleah) who works in Austin, Texas. The piece was crafted to pay homage to Clarice Lispector's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece, Água Viva. We read this experimental novel in the second year of my MFA program. It was inspiring and refreshing to me during a time when I sincerely began to doubt my relationship to poetry and writing. The tattoo was inspired by the quote from the book below,

The beautiful orchid is exquise and unpleasant. It isn't spontaneous. It needs a glass dome. But it is a magnificent woman and that cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that it is noble because it is epiphytic. Epiphytes are born on other plants without however taking nutrition from them. I was lying when I said it was unpleasant. I adore orchids. They're born artificial, they're born art."

melanie shared the following poem, as well:

for the Men and Women

who still don’t know

what to make of it

These stories are true. – statement from louis c.k.

        I. curtain

I resolve to stare out from below || back and forth,

back and forth || through his window the sky appears

to breathe – breath heavy and ugly, the clouds are still

moving west, though, just barely || he clenches My wrists tight

as though spindles for fire || back and forth, I twist back and forth

so hard I drip pomegranate juice from forearms and elsewhere

My throat aches – it just wants sleep,

sullen and swollen though it may be.

II. coda

I don’t dream in parables

but that night I walked through a field

of dead palomino horses

on piles of yellowed fig leaves ||

in the black I sucked

my gums so hard

a tooth came straight

out of my skull and into being.

~ ~ ~

melanie kristeen is a second year poetry MFA candidate at Texas State. Her work has been published in the anthology We Can Make Your Life Better by University of Hell Press in 2016, and her poetry has appeared in Drunk in a Midnight Choir and Voices de laLuna. She received residencies from Damsite Winter Arts Colony and Osage Arts Community. melanie is the CEO of a content writing firm, By Proxy, and is also a freelance journalist working with publications across Central and South Texas.

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

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