My Tattoo Story: Elizabeth
Elizabeth, Minnesota
Antonio and Crystel. Kids are forever. However, Antonio is changing his name to Juan José Antonio sol Di Grazia. Now what?
Alison McGhee
Poem of the Week, by Kim Addonizio
I never paid much attention to tattoos until my children and their friends, and then my own friends, started getting them. For me, it’s been a natural progression from disinterest + a tinge of sadness (that beautiful skin, forever altered) to mild interest + resignation (that beautiful skin, forever altered) to deep interest (what’s the story behind that tattoo? + admiration (it’s an art form, with the body as medium) = these days, tattoos are among the first things I notice when out wandering the streets and beach. This poem, by one of my favorite poets, makes me think about them in a different way, in an everything-we-can’t-see-but-know-is-there kind of way. All the unknown stories walking around out there.
First Poem for You
– Kim Addonizio
I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.
For more information on Kim Addonizio, please click here.
My Tattoo Story: Tamara and Esayas
Tamara and Esayas, Austin, TX
We chose tattoos instead of wedding rings because we believe that love can’t be bought or sold or taken on or off and is not best represented by a material object. We thought that altering our bodies permanently was a better expression of our permanent union that supersedes the material. We also didn’t want to support the gold and diamond industries which have done so much harm to Africa. Our tattoos are each other’s initials in Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia, where we met.
My Tattoo Story: Tam
Tam, Vermont
I have the first drawings my kids ever did of people tattooed on my arm. You know, that first drawing they do over and over and OVER again?! The people with heads, arms and legs, but no bodies? The top one is my 15 year old son’s mohawk guy, the middle one is my 13 year old daughter’s (fondly referred to in our family as) ice cream sandwich guy, and the bottom one is my 8 year old daughter’s belly button guy. I am waiting eagerly for the moment when my 4 year old son begins to draw people! Also, I should give credit where credit is due. These tattoos were my husband’s idea. He has them on his leg too!
My Tattoo Story: Bonnie
Bonnie, northern New York
My parents were both killed in a car crash three years ago. One of my happiest days was when I had my parents’ signatures on a letter to me tattooed on my wrist. I look at it daily and find solace in having something so personal from them. I cherish my tattoo.
My Tattoo Story: Luke
Luke, Chicago
In college I took a class, taught by a wonderful teacher, in which Paradise Lost was the sole text. This tattoo is the next to last twenty-three lines of Book Two. We barely touched on them in class, but their imagery transfixes me. In this passage Satan has just given a speech to his fallen angels. His plan is to escape the shackles of hell, fly to God’s kingdom and corrupt mankind. But as he roars up out of the darkness into the bleak emptiness of space, he beholds the world, suspended from heaven by a golden chain. And Satan, even Satan, has to stop, if only for a moment, because the sight of it –this pendant world—is so beautiful.
My Tattoo Story: Min
Min, New Hampshire
I’m adopted from China. These characters translate as “I love you. Night-night.” I got this tattoo because my mom has said this to me in Chinese almost every night of my life and I plan on saying it to my kids (if I ever have any). 🙂
Poem of the Week, by Marge Piercy
Look at us, walking around in the world with only skin to cover up the muscles attached to tendon attached to bone that we’re all made of, invisible blood flowing through all of us all the time. Don’t our bodies seem so insubstantial for all the experiences we go through, all the conversations we have, all the music and tears and talk and laughter that pours out of us? So much of what makes up the heart of us is invisible. People from my past, for good and for not, flitted through my mind when I read this poem.
The visible and the in-
– Marge Piercy
Some people move through your life
like the perfume of peonies, heavy
and sensual and lingering.
Some people move through your life
like the sweet musky scent of cosmos
so delicate if you sniff twice, it’s gone.
Some people occupy your life
like moving men who cart off
couches, pianos and break dishes.
Some people touch you so lightly you
are not sure it happened. Others leave
you flat with footprints on your chest.
Some are like those fall warblers
you can’t tell from each other even
though you search Petersen’s.
Some come down hard on you like
a striking falcon and the scars remain
and you are forever wary of the sky.
We all are waiting rooms at bus
stations where hundreds have passed
through unnoticed and others
have almost burned us down
and others have left us clean and new
and others have just moved in.
For more information on Marge Piercy, please click here.
Poem of the Week, by Todd Boss
My friend Erica and I are both the if-your-fingers-are-busy-then-your-concentration-is-more-focused types. We like to sit next to each other in meetings because we can then present a united front of seamstressery, which is a word I just made up. Erica, an artist specializing in handmade paper creations (her work is stunning), calmly plies her needle while I either knit or quilt. In this way, we can pay close attention to what’s being said. Slow, rhythmic projects that take time and care, like quilting or gardening or cooking or long hikes, both keep me sane and bring ideas floating into my head. When I read this poem by Todd Boss it brought me right back to elementary school, those fat pencils and thick paper with the wide lines. Wooden desks. The whispery sound of pencil on paper. The tangibility of the physical world.
The World Is in Pencil
– Todd Boss
—not pen. It’s got
that same silken
dust about it, doesn’t it,
that same sense of
having been roughed
onto paper even
as it was planned.
It had to be a labor
of love. It must’ve
taken its author some
time, some shove.
I’ll bet it felt good
in the hand—the o
of the ocean, and
the and and the and
of the land.
For more information on Todd Boss, please click here.
Poem of the Week, by Mary Karr
Scrolling through a few hundred poems this morning, no poetry goal in mind, I found this one by Mary Karr. It flung me back into memories of my long-ago cat Clemens, who appeared in my life one night when we were eating salmon. He hurled himself up from the ground and clung to the screen window of our first-floor apartment, yowling. We took him in and he never l
eft. Clem was born to the streets and it was not possible to keep him inside all the time. He was a street cat, a warrior, scourge of the feline neighborhood. One day I returned home to find him lying on the front lawn, near death, one eye gouged half-out, deep wounds in his tail and sides that took him weeks both in the hospital and at home to recover from. He loved running water and sometimes I let the kitchen faucet trickle just to watch him crouch in the sink, batting at it. His nickname was shui mao, which translates as water cat. He loved tall boxes just barely big enough to contain him, from which he would stare out, sure that no one could see him. When he was nine he developed diabetes. It was twice-daily insulin shots from then on, none of which slowed him down much. He died at 17, having finally become an old, slow cat. Clem was magnificent. I still miss him.
For a Dying Tomcat Who’s Relinquished His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature
– Mary Karr
I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns
to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I’m not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel
how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.
Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail
did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch
that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw
is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,
let me learn from this animal’s deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.
For more information on Mary Karr, please click here.
Alison McGhee 