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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Read More