Girls tattoos, tattoo styles, tattoo artists and tattoo shops

Today's first (yes, we have two!) Tattooed Poet is Curtis Harrell:

Curtis tells us about his work:

"Strange as it may seem, none of my tattoos, except, of course, the names of my wife and daughters, have particular significance to me. From the beginning I wanted sleeves, and the majority of the tattoos were chosen to fill particular spaces. Most of the tattoos you see in the photo were collected within a couple of years in a few different shops in southern California and Greg�s Tattoos in Little Rock, AR. I guess the significance for me, really, is that I have been sleeved for decades. I wore a lot of ink before it was as popular as it is now. So now, when I see other people with sleeves, I am proud of the patina mine have gathered. I hope my poem explains it better than this."

The Last Tattoo Poem

Forty years ago

I began

To fill my arms with beasts.

I saved my pay

For Charlie, the Hell�s Angel,

On the corner of Victory

And Van Nuys, his needle

Driving my dreams

Underneath my skin,

The eagle, tiger,

Peacock and rose, the dragon

Breathing fire,

The reaper staring down

All of my days.

Charlie scribed the armor

I wore in the rumbling saddle

Of my Harley iron

In the valley of L.A.

***

But time gnaws

Everything, flesh and steel.

The days have dulled

The eagle�s sharpened eye,

The peacock�s talon,

The tiger�s fang and claw,

The rose�s thorn.

The dragon�s flame has withered.

I have burned

Through a thousand skins.

Millions of minutes

Have worn me thin; I�ve been

Weathered by love

And death and countless afternoons

When nothing happened.

***

What persists is the core

Of the self-inflicted scar.

The reason why

I volunteered for pain.

Every stare

Confirms these marks

Are more than skin

Deep. Take, for instance,

The scripture scripted

Over my heart,

Chapter and verse,

The gospel faded

Back into tongues.

~ ~ ~

Curtis Harrell writes and teaches in northwest Arkansas where he also busks with the banjo and leads tours through a cave in the summer. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 1985 and has recently had poetry and plays published in The Cave Region Review, The Healing Muse, and riprap journal, where one of his poems was nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart Anthology. His work and writing are informed by the scent of maple being hand-sanded with 200 grit paper, the way last light dapples the sassafras leaves as they crimson in the October dusk, and the loping note of straight pipes on an ironhead Sportster motor. He believes �Foggy Mountain Breakdown,� the crack of a junebug off his Ray-Bans at 70 mph, and the final couplet of a sonnet are all the same thing.

Thanks to Curtis Harrell for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is �2017 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.

Although we focus predominantly on American poets, we are occasionally blessed to see work on poets from elsewhere.

One such poet is Jenn Hart, a poet from the UK. Here is a tattoo Jenn shared with us:

She tells us this is "one of my stick and poke tattoos of a petrol girl." Jenn notes that "this tattoo is very important to me because it signifies not only radical feminism but also the period of time which I started to really empower myself with DIY punk communities."

Jenn tells us that "my poetry covers a range of things, including what it is like to be a woman in punk, growing up at gigs and fighting tooth and nail to be visible."

One of the fun aspects of the Tattooed Poets Project is the range of types of poems we read and here. In Jenn's case, we don't have the written word, but a performance of her poem, "Let Loose, Lucy":

Jenn Hart is poet, musician and activist who finds it hard to hold anything back. Her poetry is sharp and and honest as she tackles mental health, female relationships and being a woman in a punk band.

In 2013 Jenn released a zine of poems Scraped Knees and Sob Stories and it was so good someone got the cover art tattooed io their leg. She set off on a DIY spoken word tour (Riot Nrrrds) with fellow punk poet Henry Raby in 2014 and is set to release her first official pamphlet of poems Better Watch Your Mouth with Burning Eye Books in April 2017.

You can find Jenn in these very places, on her website here, more of her spoken word on Bandcamp here, and on YouTube here.

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

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

Our next tattooed poet is Gabe Johnson, who sent us this photo of a very interesting tattoo:

Gabe explains:

"This tattoo represents how where I come from influences my being and writing, as well as my relationship with writing. The ink flowing into my veins is a metaphor I�ve often thought about as a young writer � feeling like my poems were something coming out of me that had laid dormant inside. Within the ink are two symbols of where I come from. The Viking ship represents my Icelandic heritage, which seems to me like my poetic lineage. The Icelandic people value poetry incredibly highly, and most of my direct relatives along that part of my family are or were involved in poetry in some fashion, whether as writers, publishers or teachers. The oak tree represents Northern California in general, where I grew up and where I have spent all of my life. The landscape, flora, and fauna of oak grasslands especially feel like home to me, and influence my writing greatly. I chose the specific design because I wanted a very simple look of a pen and ink drawing, which a friend of mine drew, and the tattoo artist (Sam McWilliams @sammcwilliams of Mermaids Tattoo @mermaidstattoo in SF) reproduced beautifully."

Gabe also sent us this short poem:

Rehabilitation

Begin again with all your breath. Trace the coast�s soft shoulders, the fogless cove and columbine. Your knee will follow, kiss the sand�shards like nettles on new skin. The highway lined by tiger-lily, oak like moss on slumping hills becomes sequoia, thimbleberry trails. You know each river rock was named, saw scaled bodies leap against the flow. You�ll set your newest scar against lost particles.

~ ~ ~

Gabe Johnson lives in Oakland, teaching English and US History to 8th graders. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Saint Mary�s College of California and his work can be found in Switchback, Philadelphia Stories, White Stag, and Poecology.

Thanks to Gabe for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

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

Readers may be wondering, where do we find all these tattooed poets? Every year I email people in the poetry community, not knowing whether they are tattooed or not. Often, they are not, but they occasionally refer me to other talented tattooed individuals who are.

Such was the case with Jenny Boychuk, our next tattooed poet, who reached out to me after I had asked Tarfia Faizullah if she was interested.

Jenny was kind enough to send us the following tattoo:

Jenny told us about this piece:

"I got this tattoo at Urge Studios in Victoria, British Columbia. I was a year out of college, working at a coffee shop, and had just found out that I hadn't been admitted to any of the MFA writing programs I'd applied to. I was preparing to move back to rural British Columbia, where I grew up, to live with my parents for a year so that I could focus on writing and apply to MFA programs for the second (and last) time. Everything felt uncertain. My roommate (a close friend who is also a writer) had just been admitted to an MFA program at Cornell University, so she was getting ready to move to Ithaca, NY. We were both a little heartbroken to be leaving our cozy apartment and life in downtown Victoria, where we spent our weekends browsing used bookstores and eating takeout on our silver, over-sized couch while we talked about books and writing. For the first time in my life, I didn't know what I was going to do next. I didn't know what I was going to do if I didn't get into any MFA programs. I was in love with poetry and I was obsessed with time. It didn't seem like there was going to be enough of it. Falling in love with poetry made me feel like I wasn't going to have the chance to do everything I wanted to do. To write everything I wanted to write. I felt rushed. Everything felt like a race. So I got this tattoo to remind myself that time is a social construct. To remind myself that it can be broken. To remind myself to be present. To remind myself that it all takes as long as it takes."

Jenny also shared a poem with us. An earlier version of it was previously published in Salt Hill:

ANTONYMS FOR TIME

The blue whale sinks

beneath every layer of earth,

silt, & clay. Dead miles ago,

she decomposes as she descends.

Eventually, she�ll fall into a bed

of sand & weed, where bottom-

feeders will swallow her

tongue, abolish her history.

ii.

Memory: eight years old

& conjuring death. Curtain

of darkness, purest black ocean:

sweep across my mirror. Thread

this needle. A question, pulled

from my mouth & shrouded

by ghostly hands: Does a person

live to be 100?

iii.

In a cedar cottage on a lake

I wished I could open myself for,

I held his pulse against the roof

of my mouth with my tongue.

I thought he�d go on forever

or just stop. I couldn�t tell

if it was dark outside�

iv.

A star dies just before I fall

into sleep. I hope to God

somewhere, someone watched

that light erupt from its cloaked sky

& pushed a single bead

across an abacus.

In a drawer there�s a photo

of my mother looking

exactly like me. In a drawer

there�s one of me looking

older than I can imagine.

vi.

The ocean falls still. The word

origin rolls off your tongue

& slips through the meniscus

which does not ripple.

vii.

In the kitchen, the ghost

of my grandmother

is baking bread. Guilt swells

against her teeth like a bit

tongue. She hears the thunder

doubled-over with hunger,

but no matter how much

yeast she folds in, the dough

won�t rise�

viii.

Somewhere there�s

a galaxy with an Earth

where the oceans

release themselves

from the grip of their moon

& like this

the blue whales fall

then rise, & rise, & rise.

~ ~ ~

Jenny Boychuk holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program, where she is currently a Zell Fellow. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016, Salt Hill, The Pinch, Prairie Fire, Room, Birdfeast, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @jennyboychuk.

Thanks to Jenny for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

And thanks to all you other poets out there who have sent talented writers like Jenny our way!

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

Masectomy cover...

Back in September, at the Best American Poetry 2016 launch reading, I snapped this photo of Alan Michael Parker's forearm:

Truth be told, Alan told me back in 2011 that he was un-tattooed, but that he was considering one. Fortunately, we stayed in touch, and he was happy to share and participate. He explained this ladder tattoo to me as follows:

"I had been haunted for years by the image of the ladder, which figured prominently in a novel I wrote (Whale Man, WordFarm Press, 2011), and then recurred in a poem that particularly mattered to me. I had sketched the tattoo I thought I wanted, and with the assistance of my partner, Felicia van Bork, who�s a visual artist, had drafted an image of the tattoo. Then I went looking for an artist, and finally found one in New York at Infinity Tattoo, But the artist I made an appointment with, when we arrived, wasn�t there: instead, we met So Yeon (@sona_art), took a quick look at her book, and said 'yes.' She did a lot of thinking, mixing colors (with my partner�s input), and adding outlines and angles; the tattoo is really her work, ultimately, a fact I like a lot.

But the image and the symbolism matter to me the most. 'The Ladder' is the title poem in my most recent collection, published by Tupelo last August. In that poem, in the penultimate couplet, the speaker asks of a wise one not present, 'Teach me to climb / down from ambition.' These lines have served me well, in my relationship to external rewards, artistic compulsions, and acquisitiveness; I�m practicing how to be ambitious for the work without being ambitious in the world. The ladder is there on my body � upside down for me to see, but right-side up for you � as a reminder of this struggle."

One note, So Yeon, the artist who ultimately inked this tattoo, is now working out of Body Language Tattoo (@bltnyc), in Astoria, Queens.

Alan chose to share the aforementioned poem with us, as well:

The Ladder

When I finally made my way across the ice

of my twenties and thirties and forties

and up the mountain through the cedars,

a great sage gave me a grass sack

to start my new life.

In the grass sack I found

a dull gray stone,

a box that once held a gold locket,

a toy fire truck, and a ladder.

I have learned to use the stone

in love, to turn the stone over.

I keep the box closed,

the gift its own cherishing.

The toy fire truck�well,

fate burns, as it will.

The great sage said a grass sack

is a thing, just a thing,

all things empty.

But Master, the ladder.

I hitched up the ladder to every height,

and still the moon rolls away.

Above the clouds

the airplanes are small and cold,

and the ladder sways.

Teach me to climb

down from ambition.

Beyond my fingertips

rolls the moon.

Alan Michael Parker, The Ladder (Tupelo Press, 2016); https://www.tupelopress.org/product/the-ladder/

~ ~ ~

Alan Michael Parker is the author or editor of sixteen books, including most recently The Ladder and the coedited volume, The Manifesto Project. Douglas C. Houchens Professor of English at Davidson College, he also teaches in the University of Tampa�s low-residency M.F.A. program. He can be found too often online, www.alanmichaelparker.com.

Thanks to Alan for sharing his two ladders with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

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

Our next tattooed poet is Paige Lewis, who sent us this photo:

Paige explained:

"I got my narwhal when I was 18, and while it was definitely an impulse tattoo, it's also my favorite one. I had it done at Oddity Tattoo [in Sarasota, Florida] by an artist who went by the name Top Hat Dave. Dave was responsible for my first four tattoos and wore a different fancy hat to each session. It was kind of the best.

Most of my shirts cover up all but the head and tusk of the narwhal, so people often mistake it for a hummingbird. I love when that happens. It makes me feel like I've got some sort of magical shapeshifting tattoo.

More magic: the narwhal can change from chubby to thin depending on how I move my shoulder. It's kind of like that thing where the flag tattoo ripples on a bicep, only it's much cooler than that.

Perhaps the most important thing about this tattoo is that it�s the only one my mom approves of (hi mom!)."

Paige sent us the following poem, as well, which was originally published in Redivider (Issue 14.1 Fall 2016):

ON DISTANCE

It's nothing. The sun, with its plasma plumes

and arching heat, is five million miles closer

to Earth than it was in July, and we are still

alive. Today, I need you to stop thinking

about such small numbers. Throw out your

ruler. Your retractable yellow tape. Send

that blue egg up to its nest unbroken. There

is no way to know how far it fell, so it never

fell at all. No more contests. Tell the dirt

to spit its watermelon seeds back between

children's teeth. Take the trophy buck

from your father's house. He won't be

angry. I promise he won't come looking

for it. Are you willing? What I mean is,

in California, a city celebrates the life

of a firehouse light that's been burning

for over a century. The citizens throw

parades, they take photos and they share

this light live through websites. What I mean

is, this one light can reach as many people

as the sun, and you only have to reach me.

~ ~ ~

Paige Lewis, whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review, The Colorado Review, and elsewhere, is the 2016 recipient of The Florida Review Editors� Award in Poetry, and is the author of the chapbook, Reasons to Wake You, forthcoming from Tupelo Press.

Thanks to Paige Lewis for sharing their cool narwhal and their poem with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

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

I've been emailing with Liz Dosta for five years about participating in the Tattooed Poets Project. This year, the stars aligned and we were finally able to connect on a submission. This is her tattoo:

Liz explains:

"The tattoo in this picture is the Greek symbol for the astronomical sign, Scorpio. I am a double Scorpio; my rising sign is Scorpio as well. This means that I am a Scorpio to my core. My friend, Quyen Dinh (@parlor_tattoo_prints), gave this tattoo to me about thirteen or fourteen years ago. It was summer, and we were sitting on her bed in Irvine, California. I remember it being very hot and having to fan myself with my other hand as she worked on my wrist. This was my first tattoo, and I got it at a time when I was friends with a group of female Scorpios (Quyen tattooed each of us, in fact, with this symbol, though in different places). Quyen Dinh is a fantastic artist and painter in her own right, but she was not a practiced tattoo artist at this time. She had managed to MacGyver a tattoo gun using a VCR motor, a sewing needle, and the tip of a No. 2 pencil's eraser. She used this 'gun' only on herself to get the hang of tattooing. When her mother found out, she became so frightened, that she bought Quyen a proper tattoo gun. This is the gun that she used on the rest of us. To this day, I think fondly of this tattoo, and all that it represents.

Liz sent us the following poem, as well:

A GIRL NAMED DUKE

Here is the thing:

I was born and my father, John, named me Elizabeth.

Even then,

an operatic twilight inside me sang. Even then the river diverged

as I spoke my first word,

red and not Dad.

Had I been a boy

he would have named me Duke, after John Wayne,

but the joke

was on him, because I thought I was a boy, or

in wanting boys I dressed like a boy:

in overalls and white shirts

pulled at the neck. I cut my chestnut hair

butch I guess, right below the ears.

Anything beyond the stars

was mine because mother

gave me a telescope. My one eye

could see so far. Looking into the fire

within a fire, nothing failed me then.

But that's a lie I tell myself.

This story begins with a man stumbling into a room.

This man is my father.

He has mistaken the kitchen for a bathroom, the trashcan

for a toilet. Quarters are spilling

everywhere. Everything

inside the kitchen is breaking apart.

A fork shatters and the pieces flutter fast, like a wing.

I reach for a wing,

I find myself chasing his birds around the room.

They do not sing.

Not yet.

~ ~ ~

Liz Dosta is a poet and artist whose work has appeared in The Atlas Review, Interim, Locomotive Mag, Pank (Queer Issue) and Two Serious Ladies, among others. She lives in Brooklyn. You can find her art work on Instagram: @liz_dosta.

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

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

Some adds on Cerise from Switzerland...

Battlefield 3 multiplayer review

A Bathing Ape 2011 Winter Collection

Diablo 3 beta gameplay video

Killer Elite movie review

Curtis Harrell and His Sleeves (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Japanese Koi Fish

Jenn Hart and Her Petrol Girl Let Loose on the Tattooed Poets Project

Where Gabe Johnson Comes From (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Jenny Boychuk and Time on The Tattooed Poets Project

TATTOO OF THE DAY...

Full Back Chilin (To Be Continue...)

Two Ladders for Tuesday, Courtesy of Alan Michael Parker (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Paige Lewis, Their Narwhal, and Distance (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Liz Dosta, Scorpio Rising on the Tattooed Poets Project

TATTOO OF THE DAY....

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