Tattooed Poets Project: Julie Kantor

As we wind up the Tattooed Poets Project on this, the home stretch of April, we are double-posting to accommodate the record number of submissions we received this year.
Our second tattooed poet of the day is Julie Kantor.
Julie sent us these photos:


Julie explains:
"It was a very early morning in Portland, OR. I picked up my best friend, Jess, to get breakfast. On the way to the cafe, we saw two guys, each had a shopping cart packed to the brim. They were laughing with each other, smiling these huge smiles. Jess turned to me and said, 'If we were bums, we would still be best friends. Bum friends.' I suggested, strongly, that we get matching shopping cart tattoos. After breakfast we found this small tattoo shop with no name off Glisan that just opened. Inside, we made a deal with the shop's very green apprentice to do both tattoos for $40. The 'bf' in the tattoos stands for bum friends." 

Here is one of Julie's poems:

From the series: Land 

12)
Waters flush north under concrete & steel, rods down
planted, now dry cracks through road we drive over, see
red lines run lengthen out from sky blue & darkening,
say “let's trace this back to where the sun doesn't even
want us w/it,” beam bridge can't take us across all the way
w/out drop before we stand safely or span the land’s
end to its own mirrored opposite. Those could be our feet
on the ground, but we ride this straight across the dividing
line where trains’ tracks alongside plains lead away from
& hear the river call us down, would one body’s dead
weight be enough to pull us into, first think we tie our-
selves w/knots we won't learn the names of, but tangle is
thick w/width, & water's feel enough for loss of, & if we can’t
sustain w/just us then we shouldn’t have to begin with.

How to Care &Feeding of Your New Tattoo

Step 1
Keep the bandage on the tattoo for at least two hours after the work is complete (or longer, depending on the tattoo artist's instructions).

Step 2
Remove the bandage very carefully and throw it away. This allows your skin to breathe and begin the healing process. Do not rebandage the tattoo.

Step 3
Put a drop of mild antibiotic soap on your hand and lightly wash the tattoo. Gently pat it dry with a washcloth (not a paper towel) taking care not to rub it.

Step 4
Dab an over-the-counter antibiotic ointment (like Neosporin) on the cleaned area.
DO NOT re-bandage your tattoo
DO NOT use Vaseline or petroleum jelly
DO NOT use alcohol or peroxide
DO NOT pick or scratch tattoo
DO NOT soak tattoo in tub or shower
get in, get clean, get out!
Stay out of pools, hot tubs, oceans, etc. for two weeksKeep tattoo out of direct sunlight and/or tanning beds
You may, instead, prefer to use a good fragrance free lotion such as Lubriderm, Jergens or Eucerin. Apply a THIN layer and work in well 5 to 6 times a day for the entire healing process. DO NOT over lubricate your tattoo; however, don't let it dry out, either. Should any seepage occur, gently dab off excess with a clean paper towel.

Tattooed Poets Project: Traci Brimhall

Today's tattooed poet is Traci Brimhall, who shares this single word with us:


Traci explains:
"I got my tattoo last April during the Little Grassy Literary Festival at Carbondale, IL. I was in Carbondale to do a reading from my first book, when I got the email that my second book had been accepted. I wanted to do something to mark the occasion, something both wild and permanent, and there was a poet and tattoo artist, Ruth Awad, at the dinner table who offered to give me my first ink. I spent that night celebrating in Ruth's kitchen getting my first tattoo.
I chose the word Duende, a word the Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca said represented "a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought." A guitar maestro had once explained it to him this way: 'The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.' When people ask me to explain it, I usually say it's an art that asks you to do battle with what is darkest in you, and what comes out is already baptized by black sounds."
Here is the poem Traci selected for us to read:

Aubade with a Broken Neck

The first night you don’t come home 
summer rains shake the clematis.
I bury the dead moth I found in our bed,
scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough 
with dirt. The dog finds me and presents 
between his gentle teeth a twitching 
nightjar. In her panic, she sings 
in his mouth. He gives me her pain
like a gift, and I take it. I hear 
the cries of her young, greedy with need, 
expecting her return, but I don’t let her go
until I get into the house. I read 
the auspices—the way she flutters against 
the wallpaper’s moldy roses means 
all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling
means a storm approaches. You should see 
her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing 
at the starless window, her body a dart, 
her body the arrow of longing, aimed, 
as all desperate things are, to crash 
not into the object of desire, 
but into the darkness behind it.

Tattooed Poets Project: Erica Mena


Among this year's Tattooed Poets' submissions, this is one of my favorite photos:

Photograph by Julie Chen
This was submitted by the poet Erica Mena, whose tattoo was inspired by the great Pablo Neruda.

Erica gives us the detail behind these wonderful tattoos:
 "This is my most intimate tattoo, my Neruda tattoo: 'Love is so short, forgetting is so long.' It's a full line (punctuation included) from Poem XX of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair in translation by W.S. Merwin. The fish in concentric circles is the symbol printed on all of Neruda's books from mid-way through his career, and was drawn from the bronze statue at his most famous house in Isla Negra. The other two images were drawn by the tattoo artist, in response to two other lines from the same poem: 'The same night whitening the same trees. / We of that time are no longer the same.' and 'Write, for example: the night is shattered / and stars shiver blue in the distance.' The design and work were done by Ram at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. 
I read Merwin's translation of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems when I was fifteen, and had that conversion experience, the moment when you realize this is what you want your life to be about. Not the sentiment, but the poetry. These poems, and this line in particular, convinced me that poetry can move between languages, times and places, freely and with no loss, when put into the right hands. When getting the tattoo, I considered getting the Spanish line: 'El amor es tan corto, el olvido es tan largo,' but chose the English because that was how I first encountered it. Out of all my tattoos it also hurt the most to get, fittingly I suppose--there was a moment where Ram was outlining the circles where it felt like my entire leg was on fire. Totally worth it."
I would add that I concur with Erica completely and offer up, as proof, my post over on BillyBlog in April 2008 here. I was running down my favorite poems for National Poetry Month and #28 was any of the poems in the book, and it just so happens I pointed to Poem XX as one shining example. The original edition translated by Merwin and illustrated by Jan Thompson is a must-have in anyone's library. But, I digress.

Tattooed Poets Project: Erica Mena


Among this year's Tattooed Poets' submissions, this is one of my favorite photos:

Photograph by Julie Chen
This was submitted by the poet Erica Mena, whose tattoo was inspired by the great Pablo Neruda.

Erica gives us the detail behind these wonderful tattoos:
 "This is my most intimate tattoo, my Neruda tattoo: 'Love is so short, forgetting is so long.' It's a full line (punctuation included) from Poem XX of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair in translation by W.S. Merwin. The fish in concentric circles is the symbol printed on all of Neruda's books from mid-way through his career, and was drawn from the bronze statue at his most famous house in Isla Negra. The other two images were drawn by the tattoo artist, in response to two other lines from the same poem: 'The same night whitening the same trees. / We of that time are no longer the same.' and 'Write, for example: the night is shattered / and stars shiver blue in the distance.' The design and work were done by Ram at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. 
I read Merwin's translation of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems when I was fifteen, and had that conversion experience, the moment when you realize this is what you want your life to be about. Not the sentiment, but the poetry. These poems, and this line in particular, convinced me that poetry can move between languages, times and places, freely and with no loss, when put into the right hands. When getting the tattoo, I considered getting the Spanish line: 'El amor es tan corto, el olvido es tan largo,' but chose the English because that was how I first encountered it. Out of all my tattoos it also hurt the most to get, fittingly I suppose--there was a moment where Ram was outlining the circles where it felt like my entire leg was on fire. Totally worth it."
I would add that I concur with Erica completely and offer up, as proof, my post over on BillyBlog in April 2008 here. I was running down my favorite poems for National Poetry Month and #28 was any of the poems in the book, and it just so happens I pointed to Poem XX as one shining example. The original edition translated by Merwin and illustrated by Jan Thompson is a must-have in anyone's library. But, I digress.

Tattooed Poets Project: Laura Goode

I had the distinct pleasure of recommending a shop to Laura back in January when she was planning on getting a new tattoo in Los Angeles. Knowing she was going to be near Pasadena, a lovely city I once called home, I suggested Resurrection Tattoo and she was very happy with the experience. This is what she got:  


"My newest tattoo, a peacock feather, is an homage of sorts to my friend Jon, who died of cancer on January 20, 2011. Jon’s middle name was Skanda; Skanda is a Hindu god associated with the sword, symbolizing his protection, and the peacock, symbolizing his destruction of the ego. Skanda is often depicted riding around on a magic peacock, and I like to picture Jon doing that now.

The particularity of Jon, and the shape and singularity of the hole his absence leaves in my life, was that he was not just friend to me, but more than that, sometimes transcendently, he was collaborator. Our relationship was marked by fervent bursts of art. He starred in, and photographed, the first play I ever wrote. He art-directed my second. He took the author photo for the jacket of my first novel. He was my colleague, my interlocutor, in innumerable conversations about queer theory and Chinese propaganda art and writing and Aphex Twin and, eventually, cancer. He called the Facebook album of my author photos 'Portrait of An Author As A Young Author’s Portrait.' He told me that if there were ever a Lifetime movie made about my life, it would be titled 'Laura Goode: Heart of Gold, Womb of Steel.' During a period of time in our lives marked by wild, leaping growth, Jon wove so many fibers into the fabric of my initiation as an artist. I hope I did the same in his, but I don’t have the luxury of asking him.
For all these reasons, it felt appropriate to mark Jon’s impact on my life, as well as the impact of his departure from it, with a work of art. I got the feather at Resurrection in Pasadena with one of my and Jon’s best friends, Meera Menon, who got her own feather for Jon. Afterwards, Meera and I talked about how we experienced the pain of paying homage to him in a skin-abrading way: it doesn’t hurt as much as losing him, I told her I had been thinking. We confided that we both thought the pain brought us somehow closer to Jon, closer to how much pain he had experienced himself.
I look at Jon’s feather now, knowing it will walk with me always, and its splashes of wild color, its heady plumage, bring me some of the joy that Jon himself once brought me. As Skanda’s paradoxical peacock illuminates, death destroys the ego, and both the pain of losing Jon and the more literal pain of memorializing him physically have humbled me. In life Jon raised me up to the rafters of the imagination, and in death he brought me back down to earth. The below poem, I think, celebrates both 

Sexy Girl Tattoo




So you're looking for pin up girl tattoos? They're something else, that's for sure. These tattoos are an expression of the beauty of females. I really like these kind of tattoos, as it's far from generic. Read on to learn more about these tattoos, and where to find the best designs. It's much more common to get cartoon like illustrations instead of tattoos that depict real girls.



These illustrations are often of a nice looking woman with exaggerated proportions posing in various positions. You can make these more interesting by using a certain theme for your pin up girl. Popular choices are devil girls, angels, or warrior-princesses. The other style of pin up girl tattoos are tattoos of real life women. These are often famous models or celebrity sex symbols. The most famous pin up girl would have to be Betty Grable, while the new pin up queen is arguably Dita Von Teese. In the more modern style the girl is either half-naked or completely naked.



When deciding what type of tattoo you want it's important to think about future jobs, since formal environments don't always take a liking to tattoos that are easily seen, certainly not of naked women. Today there are so many designs to choose from, and the internet has made deciding what tattoo you want that much easier. Before getting your tattoo done, it's therefore highly recommended to join a good website where you can explore tattoo galleries to find out what design suites you best

Tattooed Poets Project: Izzy Oneiric



I'll let Izzy take it from here:
"My sleeve took 11 years to complete. The figure in the center is Dream from the Sandman graphic novel. I first saw it when I was 14, and knew instantly I wanted it tattooed. I got it a few months after I turned 18 by Steve at the Lion's Den in Salem, New Hampshire. Eight years later I was living in San Francisco, and wanted to add to it. I knew it needed some sort of dream imagery, but it was difficult to narrow that down. I began interrogating the basic elements of dreams, and thought one day: 'If DNA is the basis for all human life, could it also be the basis of dream life? What would a strand of dream DNA look like?' Using the work of Patrica Garfield, a clinical psychologist who's identified 12 universal dream themes that transcend age, location, gender, etc. I started designing the double helix; quickly realizing not all 12 would fit on my arm. On my shoulder is a blue moon; in a double-helix pattern around my arm are Royal typewriter keys with hobo symbols (representing communication/ miscommunication), weaving into a peacock from the Russian Tarot of St Petersburg (representing mythical creatures/animal friends). This was done by Natalie Chandler, at the time working at Black and Blue Tattoo. 
I wanted to fill in the background, but didn't want to disrupt the double-helix shape. I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I left it alone. A few years later, I was working at Cold Steel Tattoo & Piercing. On a whim one evening I googled 'double helix,' and one of the results was the image of a nebula in the shape of a DNA strand!
The colors and the shape were perfect. I brought it to my friend Vincent Weiner who was tattooing there, and we worked on it in bits and pieces. I tried to pay him, but he refused my money. I asked how I could compensate him for several thousand dollars worth of work. He was waiting for his wife to get her green card, so he said 'Nobody's baking for me right now. I'd really love some chocolate-chip cookies.' For every session I brought cookies, banana bread, cranberry muffins, some weird chocolate-coconut drops... 
I'd always dreamed of having stars on the piece, and in Morpheus' eyes. I'd tried surface piercings with PTFE bars, but they all rejected, so I was greatly excited when people began experimenting with dermal anchors and reporting success. About a year later I was living in New Orleans and learned that Adam at Electric Ladyland (now at Slave to the Needle in Seattle) was doing them. 
We 'bedazzled' my arm with six Swarovski crystals. They healed nicely until I moved to Chicago, when they suddenly all rejected. Now that I'm back in New Orleans, I'd like to get them reinstalled."
This is definitely the first time we've highlighted body art which included dermal anchors. Very cool!

Izzy sent along this prose poem to accompany her contribution:

Blue Roses are Blooming in Safeway

Oracle asses were tickled by gas plumes. We know now, what of it? Ethylene case closed diminished returned to sender . send her Erato Echo Glossalalia babble bury shovel stop Decline. To state. To play. So there. Repeat. Blue roses are blooming in Safeway. Champagne ruby is slang for magnum. Artaud’s black crucifix pupils ablaze in golden eyes I plagiarized because I want to see so badly but I gotta walk past flooded lottos, plainclothes Cutlasses, Dinner, Linner, 4th meal, Dunch neologisms like I am a woman, half eaten mosquitoes and Teardrop Mike wanting guilty date, a guilty beer, because all American women drink and don’t have any Mexican friends.

Animist, manimal, my keys do not break. There are escalators in my head watering flowerbeds with ropes of crystal spit, burping readymade Rubbermaid green baby coffins, smoking Christmas in a jaundiced sky.  

Over beef tea and sheepish mirrors, defective alexandrines tell me it gets easier with practice, hurts a little less each time. Like so much decapitated obsidian, we know not now how high the ledge is very high, this crisis not of poetry but concrete and well, since Pythia choked on the geyser she’s gone now, my hair caught on fire, please tune my viola, I know a few songs from when I was a child. Stardust Memories, yes, I can play that piece quite well.
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