Author: alisonmcghee

My Tattoo Story: Dennis

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Dennis, Houston

I just published a book titled “The Play’s the Thing,” aimed at young adults, with the goal of making Shakespeare something that you want to read instead of have to read. Shakespeare’s plays have been incredibly meaningful to me, and I decided to commemorate the end of the project with two tattoos.

The first is from Henry IV, Part One. Falstaff, reluctant to go to war, says, instead, “Give me life.” The second is from The Winter’s Tale, in which Leontes, convinced his wife has been fooling around with his best friend and certain that his newborn daughter is not his, orders Antigonus to take the child to a remote place and abandon her there. Which Antigonus does, but after he leaves her, the audience hears hunting horns and barking dogs, which leads to the greatest stage direction ever: “Exit pursued by a bear.” (He’s eaten off stage.)

So on one arm, there’s give me life. On the other, an acknowledgment that when you least expect it, you can get eaten by a bear.

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My Tattoo Story: Liz

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Liz, Seattle

My parents literally have my back. My mom and I got matching tattoos a few years ago — roses, because Rose is her middle name. I’d said I might go for it on Facebook, and the next time she visited me in Seattle, we both went for it!

And on my dad’s birthday, November 22, in 2014, I had the first of three sessions on a sunflower/dahlia tattoo. Sunflowers were his favorite flower (he loved Van Gogh!), and I’d been wanting this tattoo for a long time. On that same birthday, he was in intensive care after surgery for the cancer that took his life five months later. I’m grateful he got to see my sunflowers — something permanent can be very comforting.

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My Tattoo Story: Heather

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Heather, New York City

I loved this line from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman as soon as I read it in a Romantic Literature class in college. I carried it around in my pocket for ages, thinking how it captured my whole life philosophy so well in just a few words. (The whole line is Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.) And I had the idea to tattoo it onto my forearm. But the aesthetics never quite came through for me, because choosing a font was impossible. I knew whatever I chose I’d end up hating in a year or two. I was talking with a good friend about it, and he said, “Why not get it in Walt Whitman’s handwriting?” And it was the aha moment I’d been waiting for. I scanned the internet looking for the right manuscript pages. Turns out they didn’t exist, but I was able to cobble the words together from a few separate sources. (If you look closely, you can see that “multitudes” changes style in the middle…it gets messier at the end, because it came from two entirely different words from different poems written years apart.) The artist was Michelle Tarantelli at Saved Tattoo in Willliamsburg. I admired the nuance she was able to get in her black and white art, and knew she’d be able to capture the feeling of a fountain pen.

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Poem of the Week, by David Kirby

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There’s a video somewhere in my house, laboriously taken on a huge VHS camcorder and then laboriously transferred years later to a cd, of a Rope Power competition at my children’s elementary school. Rope Power is a compilation of incredible feats of jump ropery –synchronized jump roping, trick jump roping, speed jump roping– practiced for weeks and months on end.  At the completion of Rope Power there’s a performance that all can attend. Loud music. Team t-shirts. Scads of children wildly jumping to the gasps and applause of the audience. Toward the end of my home video the gym clears for a special performance by an ace jump roper, who enters with one leg wrapped around his neck, jump-roping on the other. At one point he may do a sort of flip-thing while still jumping. It’s not clear, because at that point in the video the camera suddenly jostles and you can hear me yell (having just realized it), “Holy shit! That’s my son!” There are many reasons why I love this poem, and the line But I also wanted to learn that trick where you grab your left ankle in your right hand and then jump through with your other leg is one of them.

 

Taking It Home to Jerome
     – David Kirby

In Baton Rouge, there was a DJ on the soul station who was
always urging his listeners to “take it on home to Jerome.”

No one knew who Jerome was. And nobody cared. So it
didn’t matter. I was, what, ten, twelve? I didn’t have anything

to take home to anyone. Parents and teachers told us that all
we needed to do in this world were three things: be happy,

do good, and find work that fulfills you. But I also wanted
to learn that trick where you grab your left ankle in your

right hand and then jump through with your other leg.
Everything else was to come, everything about love:

the sadness of it, knowing it can’t last, that all lives must end,
all hearts are broken. Sometimes when I’m writing a poem,

I feel as though I’m operating that crusher that turns
a full-size car into a metal cube the size of a suitcase.

At other times, I’m just a secretary: the world has so much
to say, and I’m writing it down. This great tenderness.

 

For more information about David Kirby, please click here.

My Tattoo Story: Erin

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Erin, Illinois

My dad passed away last year suddenly. My sister and I were devastated and decided to do tribute tattoos for him on our right wrists. My original idea was to copy a poster he had made in the garage in his handwriting. It was a Chevy Symbol with the Words 1 HOT VET. He restored Corvettes as a hobby and I came up with the specialized plate for the 1962 (he also restored a 1958) which was 1HTVET. However, after thinking about it, I wasn’t really crazy about having to explain why my wrist says “1 Hot Vet” on it. So, luckily, my sister was going to do a poppy with his signature as the stem. I fell in love with her idea. My dad  served in the Air Force during Vietnam, and at the time of his death was the Commander of the VFW Post in Bloomingdale, IL. Being a Veteran was very important to him.  Poppies are a symbol of remembering our Veterans. My Dad is obviously my favorite Veteran. Finding his signature for the stem was not as easy as one might think, but we got it. In the end my sister also changed her mind and went with just his signature. This is by far the tattoo that gets the most compliments.

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My Tattoo Story: Stacy

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Stacy, Minnesota

My two sisters and I have this tattoo on our wrists. My oldest daughter designed it for us. Three music clefs: the treble clef is up on mine because it looks like an S for Stacy; the bass clef is up on my sister Jen’s because it kind of looks like a J; and the alto clef is up on my sister Becky’s because it looks like a B. We all took piano lessons as kids and were in band all through high school, so music was in our lives.

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My Tattoo Story: Susan

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Susan, Virginia

When my daughter turned 18 she told me she wanted a tattoo. I had been thinking about it for many years and I told her that if she still wanted one when she had waited a year we would go in and get them together. Not quite a year later, and after lots of discussions about picking something meaningful, we went in together. We both got honu (sea turtles) in the same spot. She picked a highly detailed traditional Polynesian design. I made mine a bit more personal adding my children’s initials and Ohana to the design.

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My Tattoo Story: Maegan

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Maegan, New Hampshire

This tattoo was my first. Shane was a 15 year old trans-man. He took his own life before he could actually experience it. He was always full of life and an incredible inspiration to not only me but to everyone who actually gave him the chance. Shane wrote a poem: “The 27 Things I Want to Do Before I Die.” “Be Revolutionary” was the last on his list, and he most certainly was.

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Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser

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My grandfather had a wild child of a sister who, if I’m remembering right, ran off in her teens to marry a carnie. She loved to fall in love, but it didn’t always end well. I only met her once, at lunch, when my family was on a road trip and we stopped at her and her current husband’s home. When he was spoken about among family members, it was always in dark, hushed tones. He was mean, apparently, angry and abusive, with a violent temper, and my great-aunt was afraid of him. At that lunch what I, the child, saw was an old man who sat silently at the head of the table. I watched as he tried to spread mustard on a piece of bread. The knife dropped from his hand and mustard splattered on his plate. I remember the covert look he darted around the table when this happened. No one said anything or looked at him, but I remember briefly meeting his eyes and sensing his humiliation. The image of that old man and the look in his eyes has been with me my whole life, and it came flooding back when I read this poem.

Tattoo
– Ted Kooser

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

 

For more information on Ted Kooser, please click here.