My friend Pippa at True Love Tattoo did this for me today. I didn’t even see the design until a few minutes before I got it done, all I told her was that I wanted bees, and she suggested strawberry flowers. I trust her a lot, obviously. I love it.
Pippa and I have been friends for nearly twelve years now, but this is the first time she’s tattooed me. I think we will extend this into the rest of my forearm, eventually.
Arabic calligraphy for a tattoo in my Inbox. Drinking gin with lemonade and watermelon. Falling asleep to rain, waking up to rain. Dream that I am at the bottom of the ocean, then flung violently by a wave into the sky. After the wave another wave, of broken glass and ring pulls and plastic fragments, shells. Dredged up debris arching out of the ocean like a polluted rainbow to find my naked skin. Debris sticks to my body like magnets, until I am concreted into a mask. A body that stiffens and sinks. Whales always rescue me in my dreams. Sometimes I am on a boat and the ocean is a storm or a tsunami and whales swim up underneath the boat until the boat breaks up. Then I am in the water, swimming with them. In other dreams I hear a song I can’t translate and an old woman is tattooing my chin and lips black with a bone chisel. When I wake up I think if I live to be her age, I will get this tattoo. I am always armoured with lipstick. Nude lips don’t know how to lie. I lie with silence. The second dream I had last night was about rape, and the dream after that, and the dream after that. I seek out the thumb of a new master. I am prepared to beg: make my body forget, how does a body ever forget. His opposite is a good man I’m afraid to touch. The ruin I’ll bring him in my fingertips and mouth that itches like a vein remembering heroin. Drowning because it’s the only time I feel like I’m not drowning. Drowning open mouthed, my body rained in. I haven’t forgotten how to swim, I just want to stop.
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
From Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos
This awesome tattoo belongs to Molly:
This tattoo was inspired by a trip to Bread Loaf this summer, where I studied poetry with Ellen Bryant Voigt. I have always admired the ways we can re-imagine poems outside of typical lineation, how poems can become sculptures and books can be objects of art with textures and breath. A bit of fortune converged with my desire: I have a dear friend in my MFA program whose husband happens to be a tattoo artist, and that husband just so wanted to spend some time on a letterpress, and I had just acquired a Kelsey platen press. A trade was proposed, and Shawn designed the whole thing with wings in mind, something that would also resemble lungs and breathing and the lift of freedom at the end of Sharon Olds‘ oft-studied “I Go Back to May 1937.” The poem is there, on my arm, in its entirety. Olds is my most beloved living poet, and this poem speaks to me with my own work–taking life experiences and professing: “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.” Olds once said that poetry comes out of her lungs, and now I have this reminder, this collection of gorgeous language, that tells me again and again: don’t forget to breathe, don’t forget who you are.
You can view Molly’s Flickr set for more pictures of the tattoo’s progress.
The tattoo was done by Shawn Hebrank of Identity Tattoo in Maplewood, Minnesota.
(Source: poetryfoundation.org)
I’ve decided I’m going to get bees tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. Bees are part of my poetic mythology (some collected bees) and I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me sooner. Cam pointed me to this Mitch Clem comic which I immediately fell in love with.
Diane Cluck - Ink & Needles
I’m so happy there are other Diane Cluck fans on Tumblr.
Lady Gaga’s been consistently surprising me lately— in a very good way! On her arm is a Rilke tattoo, featuring this quote from Letters to a Young Poet: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” (One of my favorite lines.)
(via tonimarie) (via aileen365) (via andrewdkeller)
birds (via tell me about the trees where you live)
ink on a pin / underneath the skin (via kathleenjoyful)
