Jenn McCreary's Owl (The Tattooed Poet's Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Jenn McCreary:

Jenn explains how her owl came to perch on her arm:

"This tattoo was done by Anna Paige, owner of & artist at No Ka Oi Tiki in Philadelphia. It was in part a cover-up job— concealing my first tattoo, a woman’s face in a crescent moon on my shoulder—which I’d gotten around my 21^st birthday.

I’d been thinking about this piece for over a year & had collected a folder of images of Athena’s owl, including the Athenian owl on the Greek drachma, which I turned over to Paige during our consult. 

When I went back for the ink appointment & Paige showed me her design I told her it was way too big. She countered that it was exactly the size it needed to be to fit the musculature of my shoulder/arm & look properly anchored, & was still high enough to be covered by a short sleeve, should I ever need to hide it. She drew it on a piece of saran wrap & held it to my arm to prove the point. She was right. 

It took about four hours. We talked about cooking & listened to country music. Paige let me watch until it was almost finished& then instructed me to turn away while she finished, particularly the eyes, which she’d saved for last.​"​

Jenn sent us the following poem, as well:

owls do cry

o on the bats’s back       on a night in summer    a

night like now        on the lawn       or in the grotto

or by  the japonica     or under the tamarind

&  after summer            &  the  creases will come

out in    the air        &  o kind air  that could never

fulfill any promise

o air that is a green & violet & silver thought     is

a shiny thing    is equal parts vinegar & glitter   is

glitter-bright     is vinegar-sharp

& now in this hush     & now we shall have broken

clouds         &  now  snow           &  now  a  cozy

feather      & now sleeping does opens secrets

o faultless hiding place      o moon swallowed by

owl’s   wing            o   moon   that   sends   you

back     o seized again

& with a burning one of its million hands         &

struggle does begin again    & again       & goes

on      & on       & does never finish

~ ~ ~

Jenn McCreary’s most recent full-length collection, & now my feet are maps, is available from Dusie Press; sections were adapted for stage with the playwright Kathy Vinogradoff for performances at Small Press Traffic’s Poets Theater in the East Bay, CA, & at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia. Other ​books include The Dark Mouth of Living (Horse Less Press), :ab ovo: (Dusie Press), a doctrine of signatures (Singing Horse Press), & Odyssey & Oracle (Least Weasel Press).

A 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts for poetry, she lives in Philadelphia with her family where she edits ixnay press.

Thanks to Jenn for sharing her cool 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.

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

A Tattooed Poem on a Tattooed Poet - Angel Nafis on Danez Smith

Today's tattooed poet is Danez Smith. Look at this amazingness:

Danez tells us:

"i got this tattoo of my good friend Angel Nafis’ poem last summer. the summer before, i had heard her read it on a magical and rainy morning in Brooklyn when i was visiting her. Have you never heard a poem and realized you’ve been waiting to hear it? That even on that first listen or read it just takes you up in familiar arms and imprints itself on your soul? that’s how i feel about the poem. I had been saving the prime back space reality for something that i wanted to dissolve into the earth with, and this is it. Joshua Bennett had some really smart stuff to say about the poem here. This poem is a religion, and Angel is a saint. Now my back is my bible. Hallelujah.

i got the tattoo at a tattoo parlor down then apartment in Minneapolis from my house last year. It was called something else at the time, but now the shop is called Steady Tattoo. I wanted to go for a typewriter feel, and i wanted the text to be bold and asking to be read. something to make we feel like she typed the poem on me."

You can read Angel's complete poem here. Danez notes that his tattoo is only one section of the poem. He also shared the amazing moment when he revealed his tattoo to Angel:

Danez shared the following poem that originally appeared here, on the Collagist:

One buzzfeed test tells me I'm bonafide naughty, the other one tells me I got hella life skills

I typed a description of myself on Web MD, told me by my symptoms I either had the blues or I was a hoe. I guess both are true. What's a slut if not sad? I am lonely even when filled to the brim with some guy who I think is named Robert. Who knows. He's behind me, hacking away at my body like a sous-chef gone mad or maybe just like he doesn't know my name, I'm on all fours on my phone taking quizzes on Buzzfeed to tell me what X-Men character I am & what Sex In The City Character I would totally be BFF's with. If you must know, Wolverine (the one who can't control himself) & Samantha (the one with the mouth shaped like mine (you know, open)). When he's done, he leaves. I wish there was a way to complicate that, but isn't it simple? Isn't this our most ancient & practiced ritual? Haven't men been meeting to be lonely together for years? Is me playing on my phone any worse than some two men laid up in a field of tobacco, one reduced to grunt & thrust, one staring up at the sky making stories out of clouds? Give him his blue heaven littered with doves to keep him while some man dances a brute waltz within him, just leave me my twitter so I can live tweet this mediocre Moulin Rouge #hedoesntlooklikehispics #seveninchesmyass #wheresthebeef #couldagonegroceryshopping #IwonderwhatBeyonceisdoingrightnow #nothingbettertodothancountthestars #allthestarsarelonely #moststarsaredead

~ ~ ~

Danez Smith is the author of [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on ya knees (2013, Penmanship Books)

and Black Movie (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. They are a 2014 Ruth Lilly - Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, a Cave Canem and VONA alum, and recipient of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. They are a 2-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist,
placing 2nd in 2014, and a 2-time Rustbelt Poetry Slam Champion. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective. They from St. Paul, MN. you can find them at danezsmithpoet.com and @danez_smif on twitter.

Thanks to Danez for sharing his 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.

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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Katie Bickham

Katie Bickham is our next tattooed poet. She first emailed me the photo of her tattoo two years ago but her submission fell through the cracks. I apologize in advance for everyone having to wait two years to see this awesome work:

I mean, seriously, how cool is that?

Katie credits this work to Micah Harold at Red Handed Tattoo Parlour in Shreveport, Louisiana.  She tells us how this piece came to life:

"As a writer, when I thought of getting tattoos, I always thought I'd get a particular passage or an image from one book or another.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were too many.  Being a reader and a writer make me part of a tradition so big and so old that I'll never even read a tenth of a percent of what's already in the world.  So I decided to get the biggest stack of books that would fit on my torso.  But not a tidy stack.  I wanted a stack that was toppling, like it was always about to tip over with its own weight.  No titles. Just a stack of books always waiting to be opened."

Katie sent us the following poem, which is previously unpublished:

Proof

I pick up my lecture on metaphor
from where I’d stopped it on Monday,
alternate deliberate eye
contact and turning my back
to make examples in large letters.

They cannot picture me
in the neighboring chair, where I scribbled
for eight years, staring at the backs
of my own professors, who I never seemed to picture
going home.

I sit and stay after for questions,
the long desk distance
between my body and their bodies
making us unreal
and improvable to each other.

Hours later, I hear the scrape
of the garage door lifting,
hear you drop
your briefcase on the kitchen counter,
and we resume

where we left off before
I wound up my hair, buttoned
my sweater and filled my thermos
this morning. You bare
my tattooed back

and exhale your other day over it
and plant your mouth
on that one spot
I cannot touch
with any part of my own body.

~ ~ ~

Katie Bickham's first book of poetry, The Belle Mar, was selected by Alicia Ostriker as the winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize, and was published in 2015 by Pleiades and LSU Presses.  Her work has also won the Editor's Prize from The Missouri Review, and has been published or is forthcoming in The Southern Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, Deep South Magazine, and elsewhere.  She earned her MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine.  Katie teaches creative writing at Bossier Parish Community College in Louisiana. Visit her at www.katiebickham.com. 

Thanks to Katie Bickham for sharing her amazing 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.

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.

Tammy Bendetti's Phoenix Soars [The Tattooed Poets Project]

Today's tattooed poet is Tammy Bendetti, who shared this unfinished, yet nonetheless spectacular back piece:

Tammy sent us a back story that addresses this work, as well as the poem she included:

By the time Paul Lunetta over at Fossil Tattoo [in Fruita, Colorado] began this piece, I'd been wanting it for a decade. Years before, the day after Senior Prom, I'd gone to the Texas coast with a group of my friends. It was sunny, we were giddy, and three of us swam out alongside the pier. We were unaware of the riptides that plagued that stretch of the beach, and the wind that was gradually picking up far out over the ocean. The waves became suddenly huge, and we realized just how far out we were. Pummeled by whitecaps and dragged backward, we were fighting to keep our heads up, much less make much progress toward land. My friend Ashley helped pull me in a little; then, our friend Yohance helped both of us in turn. This must have exhausted him. By the time I flagged down a child with a boogie board, Yohance was falling behind. Horrified, we watched him ride each swell upward, farther and farther out to sea. We couldn't turn back, lest all of us be drowned. Three days later, the Coast Guard found his body. 

I couldn't let survivor's guilt drag me under, too. Instead, I decided I had to make something of myself, but what did that even mean? I was already headed off to the University of the South in the fall. Everything felt drenched in meaning, everything a symbolic gesture. So I explored the forests. I overcame my anxiety and made dozens of friends. I drank too much, slept too little, learned a lot. It was one of the happiest times of my life. But after a heartbreak coincided with an illness, I flunked out. I had to move back in with my parents while I recuperated. They took good care of me, but I felt lost. Eventually I fell in love again and transferred to my local state college to finish my degree. By that time I was studying with a baby in my arms, in the depths of postpartum depression. That felt like drowning, too.

Today, I've married that second love, who buoys me up. We have two children. After seven years of silence, I started writing poetry again, and have begun painting in earnest. And I got this gorgeous ink across my back, which is still unfinished. That, too, seems symbolic. None of my victories have been what I've expected; I don't feel I've "found myself." I think we are unfinished works of art, always under revision, always waking up a little different. And that leaves room for hope. That's what this poem is about. 

The Things You Thought You Needed


Those golden slippers will not fit you

after your feet callous from gravel.

Your amulet to save you from witches

was hasty; it nips at your dreams

like papercuts, now that you’ve

started hoarding white sage, eyebright,

and rosemary. And all the men

on white horses that pass through this town

are looking for women sleepier than you,

who prefer their kisses stolen, not given,

who wake only to promises less pedestrian

than a dog’s warm lick and the thought

of sausages on a cast-iron pan.

~ ~ ~

Tammy Bendetti lives and works in Colorado with her husband and two teeny daughters. You can find her art at artbytammybendetti.wordpress.com, and some of her recent publications at Thank You for Swallowing, Bitopia, and Pittsburgh Poetry Houses. Send her your best dance moves and weirdest dreams @SkylarkLover! 

Thanks to Tammy for sharing her story, her poem and her amazing tattoo with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2016 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project - Emily Stern

Our next tattooed poet is Emily Stern:

She credited this work to her "shiny genius" of an artist Crow B. Rising at Talis Fortuna in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And this piece, as well:

Photo Courtesy of Crow B. Rising at Talis Fortuna

Emily also sent us the following poem, appropriate for today:

April 17th, 2016, Would Have Been My Mom’s 74th Birthday

I was at Del Charro, with Jaime, waiting.

The second date.

Not mine.

I was his platonic darling,

and the sober driver,

the soft detective,

the unreliable interrogator,

waiting to meet him,

and his friends,

for the first time.

Juan, a teacher who, I’d learned, preferred to express his breathlessness in his first language, and who was very hungry for nachos, and social justice;

Luiz, who may have a broken heart, and agreed that Eldorado is a suburb;

Solange, who is stunning, and who knows exactly how many obstacles she has hurdled;

and, a dapper fellow, whose name I couldn’t hear the first time,

had finally arrived.

________________________________________________

Jaime mentioned the lilies in the kitchen

“She even has a tattoo.”

I removed the repurposed child’s ski sock, and presented my forearm.

“They’re my favorite flower.”

Juan said, “My sister just got this really big piece on her chest.”

Jaime and I smiled.

_________________________________________________

In my bathroom.

Before we left.

Afflicted.

Lost.

I searched.

Through every cigar box of jilted, spinster earrings

And flowery barrettes—

a secret stash

reserved for insomniac-in-the-mirror reflection—

I couldn’t find my eyeliner.

In the mirror, Jaime’s eyes threw me an anchor.

“You could write about that one, right?”

Jaime’s heart is made of warm, creamy goat’s milk, sticky tamarind, fine brown sugar, tenderness, and habanero pepper.

Last night, he actually purred in his sleep.

I counted each bird in the mirror.

“I could.”

________________________________________________

I lowered the pilled collar of my black sweater.

“What do the grapes mean?”

I wondered if Solange knew she was very beautiful.

“My grandmother grew up on a small produce farm, in Sicily.”

“And the birds?”

Great Grandma Dina

Great Grandma Manno

Great Grandma Sadie

Grandma Anne

Grandma Harriet

Aunt CiCi

Mom

Me, one day.

One day, my daughter.

“They’re the women who came before.”

My lineage.

The matriarch.

~ ~ ~

Emily Stern is the author of When Doves Cry, a memoir about her childhood and her mother’s death in 1993 from complications of HIV/AIDS. She has been writing, performing, and teaching for over twenty years. Credits include The Portland Review, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Entropy Magazine, Connotation Press, Literary Orphans, and Make/Shift Magazine. She performed in and co-created The Transfused, a full-length Rock Opera written up in Time, Bust, and Bitch magazines, has performed spoken word at Ladyfest Olympia and Los Angeles, Homo-A-Gogo, and The Sex Worker’s Art Show national tour with Michelle Tea and Penny Arcade. She’s taught all over the country, including Portland’s The Rock and Roll Camp for Girls and Tucson’s Casa Libre.

Thanks to Emily Stern for sharing her tattoos and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos 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.

Emily Vieweg on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Emily Vieweg, who is very generously sharing all of her tattoos:

Emily elaborates:

"My first tattoo was my lower back, designed by an online acquaintance. A broken heart, sewn together with the initials of my two angel babies. Unexpected pregnancies that ended in miscarriage in my 20s ... My left shoulder blade is a dedication to my son. My right shoulder blade is an angel on my shoulder. The center kanji symbols says Dragon-Woman-Mother-Love."

 The back tattoos were inked at Fine Line Tattoo in Topeka, Kansas.

Emily notes "my right wrist reminds me that no matter what job I have and no matter where I am in life, that I am a writer." This was done at 46 & 2 Tattoo in Fargo, North Dakota.

She adds, "my pink breast cancer awareness ribbon [is] for my mother who is now 8 years breast cancer-free."

Emily notes "Sunflowers are my sister's favorite flower. She is on my ankle because she is my stability. Tulips are my favorite flower." The tulips were done at 46 & 2, and the sunflower was inked at Addictions Tattoo in Fargo.

Emily sent us the following poem, which was originally published in Void Magazine in 2006, and then republished on www.writingraw.com in 2015.

Not Another Empty Table 

A trip home brings me closer
to friends, in theory. I grab
dinner at a bar, gasping a
short breath and sip my ice water,

place my napkin gently on my lap.
I don’t want another year of
tables with service for one.
My quesadillas, no onions, appear

with a salad on the side – I love bar food –
A bottle of Korbel washes it down
as the seconds tick tock and tease.
I want a table full of party sandwiches

a ketchup-stained summer tablecloth
with those clip-art fish and beach toys
painted on top. I want
a full dance card

an address book overflowing
so every time I open my bag
I am loved.

~ ~ ~

Emily Vieweg is a poet and playwright originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Her work has been published in Foliate Oak, The Voices Project, Northern Eclecta, Red Weather Literary Magazine, Soundings Review and more. Her chapbook, "Look Where She Points" is forthcoming from Plan B Press. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota where she is a mother of two, pet parent, data processor, educator and human rights advocate.

Thanks to Emily for sharing her tattoos and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Katie Riegel

Our next tattooed poet is Katherine (Katie) Riegel, who sent us this photo:

Katie explains:

"I got this design because when I was a child, I often found four-leaf clovers. I had a page in a photo album with them pressed under the plastic; I must have found at least fifty. The flower that goes with clover in central Illinois, where I grew up, is a plain white thing that smells sweet en masse. I want to carry that confidence and hope with me, to hold in my mind the idea that I could stumble across something magical at any time. So my skin says home and hope and luck. The amazing poet and artist Ruth Awad did the tattoo."

Ruth, incidentally, will be appearing before month's end on these very pages.

Katie provided the following poem, which appeared in her book Letters to Colin Firth:

April 29

Dear Colin,

I imagine you reading this letter to your wife. I imagine she reminds you what you aren’t: a statue, a moth, glass, someone else’s reason. I imagine you want to curl up into the beauty of the inside of her elbow, to be so clever you make her laugh with her whole body.

I am not always self-absorbed.

In an interview you said nothing had ever happened to you. But the world happens to us every moment—the bed happens exactly as you lie down on it, the cat with its eyes closed in the sun is happening perfectly when you see it, the doubt happens slimy in your throat at the worst time (because every time is the worst).

You were being humble. I am not trying to contradict you. I only want to say that it matters, this moment with the window closed, keeping you in.

Your friend, truly,

Katie

~ ~ ~

Katherine (Katie) Riegel’s latest book is Letters to Colin Firth, winner of the 2015 Sundress Publications Chapbook Competition. Her others include What the Mouth Was Made For, Castaway, and the anthology All of Us. She blogs to change the world with a collective of women writers at thegloriasirens.com.

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

This entry is ©2016 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.