Eugenia and A Letter (Tattooed Poet of the Week)

Our tattooed poet of the week is Eugenia:

Eugenia explains:

"I had been thinking for some years about getting a tattoo using sacred text of some kind. I believe it is the path of the poet to serve as an alchemist of language, so I felt myself drawn as a writer more toward a language-based tattoo rather than a strictly art-based one. I was thumbing through a book by John Stevens entitled Sacred Calligraphy of the East, when I saw the Siddhaṃ letter A, and I knew I had found my tattoo. Siddhaṃ is the name of a script used for writing Sanskrit during the period ca 600-1200 CE, and is descended from Brahmi and Gupta script. Of my particular seed syllable the text states:

'A is the first and most important of the Siddhaṃ characters. It is the source of all vowels and consonants; it includes and is included in every sound produced by human beings. Hence, in both a physical and spiritual sense it is the origin of all elements. It is the seed character of Mahavairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), the supreme Buddha who manifests the unity of all phenomena. A is uncreated, the primordial form of existence.'

I received my tattoo by a young man working at Lovedog Tattoo in Soquel, California in 2000."

Eugenia sent us the following poem, which said her "relates best to this tattoo [and] is a poem of transformation, with images that are Buddhist in nature ... previously published in Chiron Review.


Shing*


I used to believe I was worthless
repeated mantras to turn my blood black
my skin lusterless

I came to believe in darkness
the tumbling down to truth

a silver pearl at the center of each battered heart

I wanted to believe in one God
Ahimsa
Atman
the great returning after death


I still believe the world is round
a black hole
denser than Pound’s Cantos
too heavy for its own fortunes

still
now

I watch the stars grow heavy with light
multiply into twos and fours
a million butter lamps spilling over

golden fish throw their marks
across a thousand seas
gilding stagnant pools in their wake

magpies gather on moonlit nights
chanting their secret
oracular tomes

a lotus blossom blooms in the mire
pulling itself from Cimmerian darkness
into the shing of this pendent world


*“Shing”: Tibetan for “field,” “good place,” or “realm,” and sometimes refers to a Buddha’s paradise.

~ ~ ~

Eugenia lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in MonkeyBicycle, Cascadia Review, The Gambler Magazine, The Found Poetry Review, Literary Orphans and elsewhere. A chapbook of her prose poems, Pamyat Celo/Memory Village, was published in 2007. She is also an analog photographer and loves working with Mod Podge.

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

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jim Cavill

Our next tattooed poet is Jim Cavill, who hails from Canada.

Jim tells us he has three tattoos, "including a half-sleeve of a typewriter surrounded by various letters and writing instruments:"

Here's a more formal collage of the work:

Jim tells us:

"I got my typewriter half-sleeve around 2008-2009 at Living Colour Tattoo in Ottawa, Ontario. My artist's name was Ben Zehner. I had the idea for the tattoo in my second year of university at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. I was majoring in English and was pursuing writing and wanted something which would represent my love of language and the written word. I tell friends who ask that the typewriter on my arm is akin to having one's lover's name inscribed on their skin."

Sadly, Ben Zehner passed away in 2011. He had moved on to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he met one of our former subjects, Kitty, as documented here.

Jim sent us this poem:

Floaters

And you pissed
All you were
Into a coffee can,
Affixed masking tape,
And scribbled on
Impermanent dreams
In permanent ink,
Filled it with styrofoam
Packing peanuts
That were too dry anyway,
And you set it floating.
You were laughing,
But not when it bobbed out of sight.
You said “Now,
We shall see,
If I make my fortune,
Or if it makes me.”
And I saw the can split,
Spill your heart into the sea,
And the packing stuffs
Came rolling home.
But I never told you
(until just now)
Because I was busy
Keeping your love afloat.
Kicking against the current,
As we were floated
Further from home.

~ ~ ~

Jim Cavill is a Canadian writer, poet, and editor living in Ottawa, Ontario. Jim has had work published in numerous publications including Highbrau, Konekt, Blueprint​, and Zouch Magazine. Jim enjoys writing novels and leaving them unfinished.​ You can find more of his work at www.jimcavill.com. ​

Thanks to Jim for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Meghan Privitello

Our next tattooed poet is Meghan Privitello.

She told us that

"I've always designed my tattoos myself. I usually have a very clear idea of what I want and where I want it, and don’t allow for much reinterpretation by the tattoo artist, unless, of course, the design will not translate well to skin. In that case, I have the utmost trust and faith in my tattoo artist to adjust the design as needed. I've had all of my work done at Rebel Image Tattoo in Rio Grande, NJ by Mike Siderio. He is probably the nicest guy in the world and does consistently beautiful work."

She sent us two tattoos, the first of which is this anatomic heart in a jar:

In explaining this piece, Meghan referred to it as her Sylvia Plath tattoo:

"My 7th grade English teacher told me about Sylvia Plath, and I read The Bell Jar, which undoubtedly made me an even stranger child than I already was. Plath was the first poet that I fell head over heels in love with, and who made me realize that being a poet was something that real people in the real world can do. It seemed obvious that I needed a Plath dedication tattoo. I wanted a bell jar since it was the first piece of hers I read, and I wanted an anatomical heart inside the jar because, as cliché as it sounds, she had captured mine. And since I also have an obsession with anatomy and diagrams, I had lines coming out from the heart as in an anatomical drawing with a letter at the end of each line, those letters being P-L-A-T-H."

The other tattoo she sent us was her "V Tattoo":

Again, Meghan gave us a thorough back story:

"I’ve always been fascinated and entranced by illuminated manuscripts. Pair that with an obsession with the alphabet, particularly with the letter 'V', and this tattoo is born. V is my favorite letter for a few reasons. 1) Whenever I try to think of words that start with V, they always seem to be words that hang on the fringe of decency and/or are embedded with violence (vagina, venom, venereal, vibrator, vulture, victim, etc.) I love that a letter can carry with it these associations before a word is even made from it. It is a powerful letter, and I can’t help but love it for that. 2) On the other end of the spectrum, or at least a good distance away from the first reason, is the meditative quality of the sound V makes. I love the vibration it makes on the lips, that it is another (somewhat darker) variation of an 'om'. 3) I love that V can be a child’s way of drawing birds, that it becomes a symbol of flight.

By way of a poem, Meghan provided us with the following:

                            Crossing the Borders
                           

Today it is yesterday in California.  I will not dress up as a wildfire or a tame woman.  I will not compare your memory to a palm tree.  I heard that eighteen starlings have died in eighteen weeks, which is something I associate with love.  The last time love undressed in front of me, I blushed I itched I regretted my name.  This means everything I want is getting closer.  Call me a fool, but I believe it when a man says he would rather die than sleep another night alone.  Every time I try to get where I belong, there is a detour.  Orange cones.  Dirty signs.  I have started confusing fate with duty.  I confused myself with an evergreen and finally considered myself beautiful.  In front of my home a man proposes to a truck and waits for an answer.  I bring him a soda hoping he’ll explode into some kind of destiny.  I’ve counted the toes of everyone I’ve known.  I’ve had dreams where having a child meant never catching my breath.  What does it take for a narrow passage to become a field?  How much longer until we open up to each other and cover ourselves with birds?  In California, I haven’t happened yet.  The thing I told you underneath the covers that sparked your interest is still afraid to die.

                              

                               originally published in Sixth Finch

~ ~ ~

Meghan Privitello is a poet living in New Jersey. Her first manuscript, A New Language for Falling out of Love, has recently been a finalist for Alice James’ Kinereth Gensler Award and Persea’s Lexi Rudnitsky Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in NOÖ Journal, Sixth Finch, Redivider, Barn Owl Review, Bat City Review, Salt Hill Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Linebreak, Quarterly West, Best New Poets 2012 & elsewhere. You can follow her on twitter @meghanpriv or visit her website: meghanprivitello.blogspot.com.

Thanks to Meghan for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.