Our next tattooed poet is Kat Finch, who shared two pieces with us. First is her tattoo on the front of her arm:
Kat tells us:
"I got my west coast kaleidoscope from Tara Johnston (@taraosprey) at Osprey Tattoo (@ospreytattoo) at AWP in 2014 while I was back home visiting Seattle. I got it with the poet Jess Poli, almost on a whim. I literally didn't see the tattoo until the morning of, and while the design wasn't able to fit in my original spot (on my elbow) I loved it too much to compromise. Getting into grad school was the first time I'd lived outside of Washington state for longer than six months, so I needed something from home to always carry with me. I don't know what it is, but the mountains and pine and fir have always just been a comfort-- all that green, all that protection. I get to carry home with me, no matter where I go. And when people ask me about it, I can name all the mountains in the region, until I run out of mountains or memory."
Then, there's this cool tattoo, too:
She notes that
"My little tiger family was illustrated by Jen Collins, and when I got her permission I took the design over to Spiral Tattoo in Ann Arbor. I just needed a tattoo, and a change, and something happy. I was in the process of losing a close friend, and I was letting this break up of sorts destroy me. Sometimes I tell people that two of the tigers are my closest friends, and that I'm the little one. Sometimes I say a lot of things. I just really love them. This tattoo really was more of a whim, as soon as I got permission from the artist, I was in the parlor!"
Kat included the following poem for her post:
+ in Dream
+ in dream + in dream we wind-
swept as always in + in dream the missing was
not absent not stone walking amidst ourselves
ourselves + one another the howling silent
makes us kindred spirits nothing makes us
kindred spirits spirits kindred + dreams walking out
nothing makes the golem + in dream my dream missing
became to mean to go to go + release wrong
in a changed manner become regret + in dream
regret begets the changeling the fortification of
wind to scream phantom the golem the fact in io-
dine remember the night + dark the
mare the walking the dream walking dream is paramount is king
is the thaw come kith + kith + night + kin-
dred spirits the mud is sewn a being without
fact a being a fact the apart the limb the mouth of + wind
without the limb to you + you are not listening with
out + you will always will be phantom will always scream
will always will + in dream you have not been known
to go missing to go but not known not known your limb is
to have been killed or killed or captured legacy +
in dream not present after a battle this mouth a
shapeless form from shape the mud the limb it
to it i it we it the it of it the golem the wind the limb
of it become of it a battle spirit spirit + you the walk
the dream say mare say night say mare-night saw it
it waits waited out of me + we + one
another golem limb not the thing to phantom you are
you + you are you are always are always out of limbed
+ in dream + in waking walking the silence
cannot reach reach out to out + in dream the phantom a being
without reach without absence without king + kith
absence alack erode to get to get to get what one
wants + in dream + in dream to kin meant to legacy
the lost to reach + in spirit on the miss + in dream a lost
is spirit to limb to phantom absence miss the lack to kin
the lack lacking to lack + mud to dream + you a mud is
we we must we must concur we must scream lost + miss
+ in + wake
~ ~ ~
Kat Finch is a letterpress printer living and working in Ann Arbor.
Currently she works as the education coordinator at SCRAP Box, a
creative reuse center. Her work is forthcoming in The Southern Indiana Review, and may also be found in The Black Warrior Review, Bone Bouquet,
Hobart, The Journal, and elsewhere. She has a little orange cat and a
little orange bike, even though orange is not her favorite color. You
can follow her art/poetry/cat on instagram here: https://www.instagram.
Thanks to Kat for sharing her tattoos and poetry with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!
This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.
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