"Awesome Minimalist" Harry Potter Tattoos (via Buzzfeed)

A few weeks back, my lovely wife sent me a link to another fabulous Buzzfeed list. The subject this time was Harry Potter tattoos.

via Buzzfeed

Check out the whole list here, along with a link to a Tumblr dedicated to Potter ink.

And here you will link to several Potter tattoos that have appeared previously on Tattoosday.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing 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.

Erica's Tattoos Help Her Through a Difficult Ordeal

I spotted Erica in my neighborhood earlier this month when I noticed a tattoo on her upper right arm. She was actually having some work done later in the week on it, so she offered up this quote on her forearm instead:

When I asked her about these lines, "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars," she explained it was a quote from Khalil Gibran. The original source is unclear, as it is also attributed to a writer named Edwin Hubbell Chapin.

When I asked her why she chose this quote, she elaborated, "I'm going through a divorce right now ... it was a lot of emotional abuse [and] this represents that."

She had that done by an artist at Three Kings Tattoo in Brooklyn.

She also had this on her inner left arm:

She got this done by a visiting artist named Rebecca at Brooklyn Made Tattoo. This, too, has its roots in her past problems with her marriage. "Yoga," she told me "brought a lot of comfort and peace" to her during these difficult times. The flowers and the om on the petal represent that.

She followed up with me the following week with this photo:

The photo is a bit blurry, but you can see the differentiation between the older, larger piece, and the new work that Mr. Kaves from Brooklyn Made added to both the top and bottom of the tattoo. The original work she credited to Vic at Wicked Garden Tattoo in Clearfield, Utah.

Erica is a photographer, whose work can be seen on her website here.

Thanks to Erica for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing 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: Carl Phillips

We're closing out this year's Tattooed Poets Project with Carl Phillips. I've had the pleasure, over the years, of meeting Carl and hearing him read on at least two different occasions at the New School in Manhattan, in conjunction with the Best American Poetry readings. Needless to say, when Carl agreed to participate, I was thrilled.

Here's a photo of Carl's tattoo:

Carl explains:

"I got the tattoo after seeing a compass on a map in my copy of Moby Dick. I chose not to include the N,S,W,E part, to suggest that I lack direction, though the compass itself suggests the desire for direction ... it's on my left upper arm. A guy named Barber did it, at a place here in St. Louis called Iron Age."

Carl pointed me to a few poems online that he said we could share here, and I chose this one:

Leda, After the Swan

Perhaps,
in the exaggerated grace
of his weight
settling,

the wings
raised, held in
strike-or-embrace
position,

I recognized
something more
than swan, I can't say.

There was just
this barely defined
shoulder, whose feathers
came away in my hands,

and the bit of world
left beyond it, coming down

to the heat-crippled field,

ravens the precise color of
sorrow in good light, neither
black nor blue, like fallen
stitches upon it,

and the hour forever,
it seemed, half-stepping
its way elsewhere--

then
everything, I
remember, began
happening more quickly.

~ ~ ~

You can hear Carl read the poem here.

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Silverchest (2013). He's a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

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

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Ethan Hon

Next up in the Tattooed Poets Project is Ethan Hon.

I met up with Ethan in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn earlier this month and took photos of three of his tattoos.

Ethan credits the talented artists at Fineline Tattoo in Manhattan.

Ethan explained that "the tattoos of Keats [above] and f(x) [below] were done by Mehai Bakaty." He added, "Keats is self-explanatory [and] F(x) I got done as reminder to be a person, to function."

As for the third tattoo (directly below), Ethan explained,

"Mike Bakaty tattooed Boy with Machine by Richard Lindner [and] was done because I couldn't stop looking at it and also because as Deleuze and Guattari remind us: A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.

I have two other tattoos not pictured: Cascading black hearts and [one] of Ulysses with his dog once he has returned, along with the Arnold Geulincx phrase, 'Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis' translated roughly as 'Where you are worth nothing, then you shall want for nothing' beneath it.

Ethan sent us this poem:

Red Hook

Jesus has dicks for hands
we must not tell him. Of course,
we will never tell him. Again,
or rather once, Dan walked, drenched
from New Jersey, home to New Jersey.
Last night I lay on the floor with a dog
named Pirate. Don’t tell Creezy.
When Santo told me his tattoo
was of his brother, I told him he should
never wear sleeves. It was not but
it was warm. I should only think
of things that are dripping with fuck--
across her lips, I did not negotiate a life
preserver. The world opens to my de-claring.
To have once been enamored is nice
but now I think everyone is divorcing,
Sail by me on your bicycles,
saying, “See you next Tuesday.”

~ ~ ~

Ethan J. Hon is from Omaha, Nebraska. He is a co-founder of JERRY MAGAZINE. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Screen and Paper, TheThe, The New Inquiry, Dossier, Tin House, Cimarron Review, Cannibal, Nebraska Review, and Assembly Magazine. His paper “It Is Easier to Raise a Shrine than Bring the Deity Down to Haunt It: Beckett in the Blogosphere” was presented in June of 2011 at Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive International Conference. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Thanks to Ethan for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Darren C. Demaree

One of the things that I love about our tattooed poets is that their is such a wide variety of tattoo photos - not just the tattoos themselves, but how the writers choose to represent their work in photographs.

Take our next tattooed poet, Darren C. Demaree, whose kids appear with his tattoo:

In case you can't make out the text on Darren's back, here's a closer look:

Darren explains:

"I got 'My Sin, My Soul', the second sentence from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, tattooed on my left shoulder blade when I was twenty-two at a tattoo place on the main strip in Wooster, Ohio. I was headed back to school for my last semester at the College of Wooster, and since my parents had just sent in their check for my last term, I was free from their threats to not pay for school if I got a tattoo. At the time I was in the middle of my senior project, which was adapting Nabokov's first novel Mary into a screenplay and a movie. I had spent the majority of that school year misbehaving, drinking too much, having too many girlfriends, and for me at that moment the sentence meant that I was claiming my own actions, recognizing and embracing these sins as my own, no one else's. Over the years, it has remained my favorite tattoo of my three, because it's meaning has morphed into what Nabokov has originally meant with those words, it means culpability and responsibility to me now. It means that though the spirit of my life has changed, my intention to celebrate all phases of my life remains, and though I no longer drink and am married with two kids, that wildness will forever be a part of me."

Darren send us the following poem, as well, which originally appeared in The Louisville Review and will be in Not For Art Nor Prayer, his second collection due out from 8th House Publishing House in 2014:

WE DID OUR BEST TO BREATHE INTO IT

Lung punctured, we did our best to breathe
into the sheep’s mouth, Emily even covered
the bloody hole from where the metal, shorn
from the fence post first stuck the animal,
stuck deep into the soft, red tissue, now unwilling
to expand the way it should. We did too much
for an animal we witnessed injured from our car,
did too much to bloody our clothes on Route 3,
while family waited for us to eat a holiday meal,
but we needed to save something then, needed
to put our mouths on something desperate,
fighting to survive with righteous intention. We,
yelling about sex, the having it, the not having it
enough, saw the spearing take the shoulder first,
then plunge deeper still, while Emily took the gravel
quickly and we burst from the car in shock.
The animal died before the farmer, the owner,
or the veterinarian could arrive, or pronounce hope
& I with my tongue warm from the expellant
of life looked at my lovely wife, her sweater torn
& I with my tongue, my tears only for the sheep,
asked her to hold me, despite my wavering hands.

~ ~ ~

Darren C. Demaree is living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and two children. He is the author of As We Refer To Our Bodies (Spring 2013) and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2014), both collections are forthcoming from 8th House Publishing House. He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations. You can follow his writings through his website, www.darrencdemaree.com, or on twitter @ d_c_demaree.

Thanks to Darren for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Justin Petropoulos

Our next tattooed poet is Justin Petropoulos.

Justin sent us this literary-themed tattoo:

Justin explains:

"The tattoo is of Gabriel García Márquez. I got it in 2002 after binge reading Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I’m really not certain, but I think the shop was called Genuine Tattoo and the artist’s name, at least what everyone called him, was Peanut. I remember two things about him. First, before turning to a life of ink, he worked in local bread bag factory. Second, he had a tattoo of a rubber chicken strung up by the neck on his right leg. I remember it because he would tell everyone that walked into the place that he had a cock that hung past his knee."

Justin sent us this prose poem:

[digression on the corn trade]

A peanut vendor sleeps beneath our uncanny resemblances, chews the brim of an old hat made of cellophane near the gates. A refugee camp should be setup on sloped terrain that provides natural drainage.

Someone will discover her there, as if she were a theory or its half versed deck of flashcards. This is an economy of light weapons—you know: it remembers nothing about its course. Some sell part of their rations for rice, at the expense of caloric intake. Scurvy is a constant. Strangers pass a blush grown through quietly. Mission bells with grass. Spongiform, the refinery bloats. Phyllode or nematode, as with us a chance cleaving.

“If you build your boat from this, it will float,” she promised them, with a blowzy stonefly and fire-eater’s tremble, extending them a weight of seed in her palm. In exchange, they offered odes to point/non-point source pollution, runoff: bits of hair and salt, manure, slurry of paper dolls flushed from the mine. “It’s not a question of food,” he said. “If we had the chance, we would walk even tonight.”

As the corn grows a girl scrapes jacks by twos followed by pink impacts. Bread bags caucus. We collect the copper jackets now, lozenges nested in the mud‐throats of loons. Melt them down. Beyond the fence a scorched earth policy town sutured by a lattice of clotheslines.

~ ~ ~

Justin Petropoulos is the author of the poetry collection Eminent Domain, selected by Anne Waldman for the 2010 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Mandorla, and most recently in Spinning Jenny. Justin co-curated Triptych Readings from 2010 to 2011 and was a guest blogger for Bryant Park's summer poetry reading series, Word for Word. He holds an MFA from the Indiana University. Justin an adjunct faculty member at New Jersey City University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his partner in crime, digital artist Carla Gannis. Visit him on Twitter at @redactioneer or at Marsh Hawk Press.

Thanks to Justin for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Sammi Skolmoski

Our next tattooed poet is Sammi Skolmoski, a returning contributor, who first appeared last year here on the Tattooed Poets Project.

She tells us, "Just like last year, my poem isn't tattoo-based, but my tattoo is literary-based ... and I think my poem fits with the tattoo." I was pleased to see this, as it's from one of my favorite books:

Sammi explains:

"Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals? is a line from the first page of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. While H.S.T. was referring to imaginary bats, this is a sentiment I often utter in the company of fellow human beings. We are odd, deplorable creatures who suffer greatly from a lack of subtlety and an excess of ego, but make for excellent objects of observation. We are the misfit sludge-mounds of earth, and, for those of us who know it, it's magnificent entertainment."

She credits this ink to "some guy at a party giving out free tattoos."

Here is the poem Sammi sent us:

GOD LOVES ME BECAUSE I’M DISGUSTING

Is it eclipse or dual dilation?
Or pre-mitotic ovulation?
Or post-? All filthy deviation
from (rampant rumored) ripe salvation.

Velocity and scope of pattern,
intestine wrapped ‘round booming Saturn--
his own dark matter so excessive
must pride our shit as art expressive.

All crispest human minds devoted
yet birthing stupor ne’er decoded:
even glist’ning spray of stars sublime’s
just cosmic schmutz on the sleeve of time.

Narcissism ever-present in
we mounds of sticky stellar resin
wading in goop of ancient mudpool
gummy galactic oil puddle.

Lest forget sins from tacky tarpit
to soul pollutants (even cosmic)
reflect rich rippling discs of rainbows
when viewed above from diff’rent angles.

~ ~ ~

Sammi Skolmoski is a writer, multimedia artist, bookbinder & florist living in Los Angeles who curates a quarterly art & lit zine called the "Moon Halo Preservation Society Zine” and sporadically contributes to the alt-weekly San Diego Citybeat. Her eyes are usually fixed upon meteors, flowers, trees or words while her ears belong to her vinyl. Check out her tumblr, madness, barely.

Thanks to Sammi for her second contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Meghan Privitello

Our next tattooed poet is Meghan Privitello.

She told us that

"I've always designed my tattoos myself. I usually have a very clear idea of what I want and where I want it, and don’t allow for much reinterpretation by the tattoo artist, unless, of course, the design will not translate well to skin. In that case, I have the utmost trust and faith in my tattoo artist to adjust the design as needed. I've had all of my work done at Rebel Image Tattoo in Rio Grande, NJ by Mike Siderio. He is probably the nicest guy in the world and does consistently beautiful work."

She sent us two tattoos, the first of which is this anatomic heart in a jar:

In explaining this piece, Meghan referred to it as her Sylvia Plath tattoo:

"My 7th grade English teacher told me about Sylvia Plath, and I read The Bell Jar, which undoubtedly made me an even stranger child than I already was. Plath was the first poet that I fell head over heels in love with, and who made me realize that being a poet was something that real people in the real world can do. It seemed obvious that I needed a Plath dedication tattoo. I wanted a bell jar since it was the first piece of hers I read, and I wanted an anatomical heart inside the jar because, as cliché as it sounds, she had captured mine. And since I also have an obsession with anatomy and diagrams, I had lines coming out from the heart as in an anatomical drawing with a letter at the end of each line, those letters being P-L-A-T-H."

The other tattoo she sent us was her "V Tattoo":

Again, Meghan gave us a thorough back story:

"I’ve always been fascinated and entranced by illuminated manuscripts. Pair that with an obsession with the alphabet, particularly with the letter 'V', and this tattoo is born. V is my favorite letter for a few reasons. 1) Whenever I try to think of words that start with V, they always seem to be words that hang on the fringe of decency and/or are embedded with violence (vagina, venom, venereal, vibrator, vulture, victim, etc.) I love that a letter can carry with it these associations before a word is even made from it. It is a powerful letter, and I can’t help but love it for that. 2) On the other end of the spectrum, or at least a good distance away from the first reason, is the meditative quality of the sound V makes. I love the vibration it makes on the lips, that it is another (somewhat darker) variation of an 'om'. 3) I love that V can be a child’s way of drawing birds, that it becomes a symbol of flight.

By way of a poem, Meghan provided us with the following:

                            Crossing the Borders
                           

Today it is yesterday in California.  I will not dress up as a wildfire or a tame woman.  I will not compare your memory to a palm tree.  I heard that eighteen starlings have died in eighteen weeks, which is something I associate with love.  The last time love undressed in front of me, I blushed I itched I regretted my name.  This means everything I want is getting closer.  Call me a fool, but I believe it when a man says he would rather die than sleep another night alone.  Every time I try to get where I belong, there is a detour.  Orange cones.  Dirty signs.  I have started confusing fate with duty.  I confused myself with an evergreen and finally considered myself beautiful.  In front of my home a man proposes to a truck and waits for an answer.  I bring him a soda hoping he’ll explode into some kind of destiny.  I’ve counted the toes of everyone I’ve known.  I’ve had dreams where having a child meant never catching my breath.  What does it take for a narrow passage to become a field?  How much longer until we open up to each other and cover ourselves with birds?  In California, I haven’t happened yet.  The thing I told you underneath the covers that sparked your interest is still afraid to die.

                              

                               originally published in Sixth Finch

~ ~ ~

Meghan Privitello is a poet living in New Jersey. Her first manuscript, A New Language for Falling out of Love, has recently been a finalist for Alice James’ Kinereth Gensler Award and Persea’s Lexi Rudnitsky Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in NOÖ Journal, Sixth Finch, Redivider, Barn Owl Review, Bat City Review, Salt Hill Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Linebreak, Quarterly West, Best New Poets 2012 & elsewhere. You can follow her on twitter @meghanpriv or visit her website: meghanprivitello.blogspot.com.

Thanks to Meghan for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Matt Wimberley

The Tattooed Poets Project owes a debt of gratitude to the wonderful Dorianne Laux. Although not personally inked, she has, over the past five years, referred me to a number of writers who are, and who have likewise referred me on to others. Dorianne never disappoints and, this year, sent a poet named Matt Wimberley my way. Matt sent me this photo:

He explained:

"I got the tattoo in Boone, North Carolina at Speakeasy Tattoo, the artist was Greg Kinnamon. The line ["All truths wait in all things"] is from [Walt] Whitman's "Song of Myself". I got the tattoo when I moved from the mountains to NYC to begin an MFA at NYU. A reminder to look at the world with an open mind and appreciate the people I meet and places I go."

He also provided us with this tattoo-themed poem:

Gosling

Ryan Gosling
has a tattoo from a page
of "the Giving Tree" on his arm
parallel to his heart. I've never
met him, but I bought the same
jeans he wears in the movie "Drive",
Levis 511's dark wash. My grandfather
worked for the denim mill
late in life, after time in Alaska
surveying for oil near the Arctic Circle.
He was young, his eyes
the same blue as glaciers
jammed in the permafrost of the Brooks Range.
In 1980 my grandfather started work
at Cone Mills, the same year
Ryan was born in Ontario.
The mill supplied Levi's
with all of their denim for a quarter century
until they closed down the same year Ryan
played a soldier in "The Notebook".
Two years ago my grandfather died
in a snowstorm, where the blue mountains
of North Carolina spread out like a quilt.
Today I'm drinking coffee in Brooklyn
overhead a flock of geese point their "V"
South out of Canada. On the table next to me
is a magazine article with a picture
of Ryan Gosling eating a sandwich
on a sun washed street. Ryan
who's read the same book I have
who wears the same jeans
my grandfather helped make
and whose heart goes on in his chest
the way all of our hearts do. One day
he'll die, and someone will write
about it in a magazine. It could be
years from now, it could be
tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He served as an assistant poetry at the Raleigh Review and currently is studying poetry in New York University's MFA program. He was a finalist for the 2012 Narrative 30 Below Contest and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in: Rattle, Puerto Del Sol, Birdfeast, and various other journals, including Connotation Press where his poems were introduced by Dorianne Laux. He has two dogs and spent March and April of 2012 driving across the country and back. Matthew resides in Brooklyn.

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

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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: Margaret Bashaar

Today's tattooed poet is Margaret Bashaar, who sent us this stunning photo:

Margaret explains what's on her back:

"The tattoo of a peyote cactus on my upper back was done by Octeel at The Drawing Room in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the past few years I've taken part in a number of medicine ceremonies with a Lakota road woman, and it will probably sound really corny, but they completely changed my life. I'd been battling with severe anxiety and depression for a few years when I attended my first ceremony, and that ceremony was the turning point for me. Since then I've made huge strides with my emotional and spiritual self and credit ceremony for turning the trend I'd been on around. Octeel is a part of the group of people I'd met through ceremony, and it seemed only fitting to ask him to create this tattoo."

About the piece on her lower back, Margaret filled us in:

"The tattoo on my lower back was done almost 11 years ago at a studio in Pittsburgh called Z Spot, which has changed locations and owners since and is now called Alter Ego. I'm about 95% certain the woman who did the tattoo (which I designed) no longer works there. It was more of a 'yay, I'm 18 and can get a tattoo now!' sort of tattoo, but I still love it and am very glad I decided to get that first tattoo." 

Margaret also shared this photo of her thigh:

and she explains:

"This particular tattoo is ... by Terence Kauffman at Kink'd Ink Studio in Windber, PA. It started as a tribute to my poetry press, Hyacinth Girl Press, with the hyacinth at the bottom of the tattoo, and has grown into a whole garden, which will eventually extend up my ribcage. There are two lines of text hidden in the tattoo - in the stem of the hyacinth is the line 'Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else' which was written by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and on one of the leaves are the lines 'yes the pun's/the devil's work, but God made language/let him in' by the poet Niina Pollari. The lines are from a poem in her chapbook, Book Four, which I published in 2011. The flowers in the tattoo (daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, cornflower, lily of the valley, and poppy) are all flowers that my mother grew in her garden when I was growing up, and all the flowers I plan to add are in the same theme."

I am grateful for Margaret sending these photos and, accompanying them is this poem she sent, as well:

These are the small moments when you know you love

When the legs that tremble are not mine,
when I have not spoken in days,
when the last taste on my tongue
is the sour of coffee

the mountain opens its mouth and I step in.

See, these are the tunnels
you must hold your breath through,
these the traffic signals that will always
make you lift your hands from the wheel,
tell you to make another wish.

You are where I go when I think I know myself,
to remind me I never can,
that there is always a new scar
to discover at the back of my thigh,
always a new lust to draw
like a needle down my back.

I am full of torn up stamens,
petals chewed to pulp.

I watch your hands grey as the days pass,
I see your hands in the fire.
They snatch the hummingbird from it.\

I've rolled this sun,
these broken branch tips
into a ball to slip
beneath your mattress.
I will keep you awake at night,
coax out your royalty.

I know you want to be suspended in the air,
full of spells or something like them,
that you see a warm blanket as the first step
toward seduction, and a badly timed joke
as the second.

Maybe we all do the same things to each other -
cut our teeth on one another's scapula,
scrape at each other's signatures with a straight razor.

Swing your legs over the edge with me and you will feel the planet
as it tries to shrug you off,
the whiplash of elliptical orbit.

~ ~ ~

That lovely poem first appeared in Menacing Hedge (click through to hear Margaret reading the above poem, along with two others).

Margaret Bashaar's second chapbook, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel, was published by Blood Pudding Press in 2011. Her poetry has also appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, Menacing Hedge, and RHINO, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she edits Hyacinth Girl Press and collects antique typewriters, which may be haunted by ghosts or demons.

Thanks to Margaret for her contribution to this year's Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

See Naomi's Tattoo: Life Doesn't Frighten Her

Well, it's a new year here on Tattoosday, and we still have leftover posts from 2012. But since it's in the 20s today in New York City, and we don't see a lot of work over the winter, I'm always happy to share posts from warmer days.

Going back to July, I was on the DeKalb Avenue subway platform in Brooklyn when I passed Naomi and had to stop and talk to her about her forearm tattoo:

Being a big fan of books, I recognized this as the cover of Maya Angelou's children's story Life Doesn't Frighten Me. Of course, while talking with Naomi, she reminded me whose art graced the cover.

The book is beautifully illustrated with the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a popular New York artist whose paintings exploded into popularity in the 1980s.

She told me she got this more than fifteen years ago from a tattooist named "Batman" who worked out of Sacred Tattoo at the time.

She explained, "I really like Basquiat and then I saw the cover on the book and I really liked the book and thought I have to have this done."

Thanks to Naomi for sharing her tattoo with us for the first post of a new year!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing 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.

Caitlin's Faulknerian Tattoo and Language

This past summer, while attending the 2nd Annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governor's Island, I saw a lot of great ink. I have a soft spot for word tattoos, and was drawn to this one, on the back of Caitlin:

This reads, in Latin, "Et ego in Arcadia."

"It's actually grammatically incorrect, but it's as it appears in a Faulkner novel [The Sound and the Fury] ... something Quentin's father says to him," Caitlin told me. "And," she added, "he says it with that wording, but it's really supposed to be Et in Arcadio ego."

Loosely interpreted, she understands it to mean "I am even in paradise."

When I asked her why she had that phrase tattooed on her, Caitlin elaborated:

"It's difficult to say ... I just think, reading Faulkner, when I was a teenager was sort of the first time that I realized what language could do. I thought ... it had certain constraints ... that is part of why I chose the saying from the Faulkner novel, I also liked the idea that ... language is fluid, there aren't really rules to it. We're changing language every day ... It's sort of comforting, walking around New York City and you see, like, all of these signs and they have grammatical errors in them ... it's sort of comforting to think of language as this living, breathing thing."

She had this done at White Rabbit Tattoo Studio in the East Village.

Thanks to Caitlin for sharing this literary tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing 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.

Re-Post: Happy Birthday, Mr. Vonnegut!

Happy Birthday, Mr. Vonnegut! 

Social media reminds me that today would be Kurt Vonnegut's 90th birthday. 

It's also Veteran's Day and, since Vonnegut wrote one of the great war novels of all time, Slaughterhouse Five, it seemed appropriate to re-post this classic Vonnegut tattoo. You can see all of the Vonnegut tattoos that have appeared on Tattoosday here. 

Enjoy this Tattoosday classic:


At the Seventh Avenue Street Fair in Park Slope on Sunday, there was plenty of ink. Amazing ink too. But I only stopped one person, Samantha.

Samantha had this simple quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut on her back. This simple refrain (used 106 times in Slaughterhouse-Five, according to Wikipedia), came to be synonymous with the Vonnegut philosophy.

Samantha had this inked on her birthday at Hypnotic Designs in Sunset Park by Dru. Her boyfriend Igor also had a Vonnegut quote inked, but on his left leg:


or, from a different view:


This quote is from God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian...

My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.

Thanks to Samantha and Igor for sharing their Vonnegutian ink here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2008, 2012 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing 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.

Gatsie Shares an Undersea Half-Sleeve and Some Additional Work from Royal Street Tattoo

Back in June, I met Gatsie on the West 4th Street subway platform in Manhattan. It was this, her undersea half-sleeve, that first caught my eye:

Gatsie told me that this work featuring sea turtles, jellyfish and a shark, was originally a cover-up and it was done by Matt Skinner at Royal Street Tattoo in Mobile, Alabama.

Gatsie was kind enough to send me some other pieces she's had done at Royal Street, as well. Needless to say, she's a huge supporter of the shop.

Her other arm hosts this phoenix by Kelly "Pony" Stephenson:

She also sent me this piece from her back:

This literary tattoo features Edgar Allan Poe and some ravens. This was done at Royal Street, as well, by Pete Anderson.

Thanks to Gatsie for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday! We'll be sure to check out Royal Street Tattoo if we're ever in Mobile!

Bailey's Pocket Watch at the New York City Poetry Festival

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the second annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governor's Island. I met some great tattooed poets, but I also ran into a few tattooed poetry fans, one of whom was Bailey, who has this cool tattoo on her foot:

The chain from this pocket watch runs up and around part of her calf, which makes this piece even neater. Bailey explains:

"It's the White Rabbit's pocket watch from Alice in Wonderland ... It's always been my favorite story and something that's stuck with me for a long time ... and I thought it was going to be the only tattoo that I got, so I wanted to get something big and meaningful."

I asked her if there was a significance to the time shown on the watch. She confirmed, "Yeah, it's 3:36, it was a time that connected with this band that I was really into and I wanted to make a little tribute without doing their logo and when [the artist] actually put the hands on the clock, he looked up to see where they were placed and it was 3:36."

The band in question? AFI. 336 is the name of one of their EPs. And, as it turned out, Bailey didn't stop with the pocket watch, she also has two sparrows at the top of her chest.

She credited this tattoo to "Pee Wee" at Bolder Ink in Boulder, Colorado.

Thanks to Bailey for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

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.

Madison Shares a Coming-of-Age Tattoo

I posted Friday about meeting Lex in Penn Station here. Her friend Madison was sitting nearby, and she shared a tattoo, as well:

This tattoo is located on the side of Madison's left thigh. For those who may not be familiar with the word bildungsroman, Madison explained, "it means ‘a coming of age story’ … and my best friend and I got it ‘cause we were in Europe together traveling...”.

I think it's pretty cool to get a tattoo that alludes to a coming-of-age story when getting inked, for many, is part of that growing process.

She credited an artist named "Joe" (or Giuseppe) at Hardcore Tattoo in Rome, Italy.

Thanks to Madison for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

Lex and The Little Prince

I met Lex in Penn Station a couple months back and started talking to her about her tattoos. She has five and offered up this piece, which was her first:

“It’s from The Little Prince [by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]," Lex explained, "I read it when I was a kid, it’s one of my favorite books. It means a lot to me.”

She had this done on her left arm in Seattle, by a visiting artist whose name she could not recall, at Deep Roots Tattoo.

Thanks to Lex for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

Cat's Eyes and More!

Back in March, on a particularly warm end-of-winter day, I ran into two young ladies in Penn Station, one of whom was named Cat. I spotted three of her tattoos almost immediately, and we had a nice discussion about her ink.

Cat explains:

"the eyes were my first [tattoos] ... on my eighteenth birthday ... I thought it would be cool to base it on my best friend's cat ... I got it just because, I'm Cat ... get cat eyes on my back, why not? It was a birthday present..."

And the name of her friend's cat? Sushi. You know I just had to ask.

The next tattoo she got was this piece on her left arm:

This is based on the art by Kurt Halsey. Cat elaborates:

"It's just always been a favorite of mine. I saw [Halsey] down in Philly and that one was my favorite print." Of course, it helps that the girl in the illustration is holding a cat.

On her opposite arm is this tattoo:

This is based on the work of Garance Doré, a fashion photographer. She's just a huige fan and loves this illustration in particular.


All of the tattoos were done by Nick Trammel at Transcend Tattoo in Branford, Connecticut


Of course, when I was looking back at the photos I took of Cat's tattoos, I noticed in the Kurt Halsey-illustrated piece that the word "saying" was inked on her ribs. It was peeking out from under her top. Of course, I had to ask and Cat obliged by sending me a photo of the whole tattoo:

I'll let Cat explain in her own words:

"The one on my ribs is from the Christopher Isherwood book A Single Man. The quote is 'waking up begins with saying am and now.' It's my favorite book and for me it's just a reminder to live in the moment and not get caught up with the little things. It sounds cheesy but when I got the tattoo I was in a weird place so I like having the reminder close to me."

Thanks to Cat for sharing all of these tattoos with us on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.