Richard Georges' Two Goddesses (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Today's tattooed poet is Richard Georges, who is our first contributor ever from the British Virgin Islands. He is sharing some amazing tattoos with us:

Richard tells us:

"I have Saraswati - Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, wisdom, and learning inside my left forearm, and Lakshmi - Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, and prosperity on my right. They were both done (as well as their corresponding sleeves) by Federico Ferroni (@federicoferroni) of Love/Hate Tattoo (@miamiinklovehate) in Miami. I haven't had anything done recently, but I'd definitely go back to him if I decide to get any more work."

Richard also gave us the poem "Exorcism/Freeport," which appeared previously in Cordite Poetry Review in May 2017:

Exorcism / Freeport

when I was eight, a priest came and flicked holy water
into the four corners of this wooden house


that kept my parents, two sons, a daughter,
and a darkening forest in its mouth.


The priest muttered in Latin, crossed us all
with odorous oils, his thumb pausing on


on the bottom of each cross, on the small
space of our foreheads where Christ was hung from.


but the spirits came every night until
my father opened the fowl’s throat like a bible,


the glint of metal washed away in blood,
a beating of black, white and red feather


his hands, the knife, performed their own recital
to feed with one hand, with the other, kill.

~ ~ ~

Richard Georges is the author of the poetry collections Make Us All Islands (Shearsman Books) and GIANT (Platypus Press). He is the recipient of the 2016 Marvin E. Williams Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer, and has been shortlisted for The Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Small Axe Literary Prize, The Hollick Arvon Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. You can find him at www.richardgeorges.com.

Thanks to Richard for sharing his tattoos and poetry with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

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