Tony Trigilio, The Star, and An Adaptor (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Today's tattooed poet is Tony Triglio, who shared two tattoos. First this cool piece, representing The Star tarot card:

Tony explained:

"I�ve been reading Tarot cards for so long, almost 30 years, that I had a tough time deciding what to choose for this tattoo: the cards that are most important to me change over time, as I grow and my psyche and external circumstances change. But The Star has always been a constant. It�s a card that represents artists and artistry�often a card that signifies writing and music. It�s also a vital dream card. If The Star shows up in a tarot spread, this suggests that the querent�s dream-life is likely central to the reading. In this way, the card is a key pathway to the unconscious for me. The woman in the card pours water on the ground from a jug in her left hand; this water flows into the pond where the woman also pours water from a different jug in her right hand. Her left leg is touching the ground, bent at the knee, while her right foot is in the water. What is on the surface�literally what 'grounds' us�is inextricable from the below-ground flow. It�s how I would like to live, with my conscious and unconscious minds in constant, interconnected conversation with each other."

He credited The Star to Esther Garcia (@butterstinker) of Chicago�s Butterfat Studios (@butterfatstudios).

He also shared this tattoo of a familiar symbol:

Tony explained the reason he got this 45 record adaptor:

"This was my first tattoo�a simple, iconic image from my childhood, back when 45rpm records were made with holes in their center that were too big for the record to be played on a standard turntable. You needed to buy a cheap, yellow plastic adaptor that would snap into place in the center of the record. The adaptor featured a smaller hole in its center, and this hole fit perfectly into the spindle at the center of a turntable. I didn�t realize that the 45 adaptors were virtually obsolete until I got the tattoo. It became a generational marker. The only folks under 25 who could identify the tattoo were record collectors and audiophiles. One of my students once asked me after class, 'What�s your tattoo? Is it a religious symbol?' As a musician, and as someone who can�t really be happy without being surrounded by music, I said, 'Depends on how you define religion'... The tattoo was created at a shop in Oakland, California, many years ago."

Tony shared the following poem:

Sonnet�To Science

                        (After Poe)

A Death�s-head Hawkmoth smells so much
like a bee, he�s allowed into the hive and steps
over the workers as he raids the honey.
It�s what comic books call weird science. 
Eventually, we all disintegrate from a
sack of blood and organs into a pool of black
and red liquid, then something insensate. 
We�ve seen this plot before.  Everything

is derivative.  A man in white lab coat brags to
his wife that he can convert any living thing
to its liquid state then back into a completely
different solid object.  The man is sweeping
pollen from asphalt outside his laboratory cabin. 
The dust yellow, tinged with pink sunrise.  

~ ~ ~

Tony Trigilio�s most recent collection of poetry is Inside the Walls of My Own House: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 2 (BlazeVOX [books], 2016). He is the editor of Dispatches from the Body Politic: Interviews with Jan Beatty, Meg Day, and Douglas Kearney (Essay Press, 2016) and Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta, 2014). He teaches poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where he is Interim Chair of the Creative Writing Department. His website is http://www.starve.org.

Thanks to Tony for sharing his poem and tattoos with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is �2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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