The Tattooed Poets Project: Tina Schumann

Tina Schumann, today's tattooed poet, has a symbol on her back that many poets may recognize:

Tina explains:

"At the age of 43 in 2009 I graduated with a MFA from the Rainier Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. It had long been a dream of mine to attend grad school and truly focus my life on poetry. I had been a fan of Copper Canyon Press for many years and as part of my 'Outside Experience' required program component I was lucky enough to acquire an internship with them.

I then worked for CCP for another year in fundraising. So CCP is close to my heart in many ways. When I learned that the Chinese characters prevalent on all their books was the Chinese translation for poetry (literally 'Word Temple') I knew that tattoo would be the gift I gave myself upon graduation. A kind of reminder to myself of the power of poetry and the central role I wanted it to take in my life. Four of my cohorts and now life-long friends came with me on that day and also got tattoos. This was my second tattoo. The shop where we got the tattoos is now gone, but the memory and tattoo live on."

Tina shared the following poem, which originally appeared in Crab Creek Review:

Random Winter Day

All afternoon we have been waiting

for snow the weatherman promised

at noon. Unreliable though he is

we plied the pantry with potatoes and bread,

milk and a chicken crouched in the freezer.

Now there is time for reverie

to take up larger swaths of the mind. Time

to survey the rooms, walk the floors,

confuse memory with memento, artifact

with fact – like a portrait 

of some long dead family uncovered

in the attic; as silent as the grave, as unknowable

as the remnants scattered in their wake.

The man has perched a bowler on his knee, the rim

of the women’s petticoat frames the buttons

on a turned out shoe. What particulars

quantify them now? Here – in suburbia –

among the old houses made new, the mouth

of every garage tight-lipped, the amorphous

whistle from the train tracks and the occasional car

that guns it up the street. I’ve written this poem before;

the little soul encapsulated in her little hut.

I am learning to live again

with unstable elements; the ghostly motion

of a garden swing, the distant whirr

of wheels and engine, an ambulance blaring

across the valley floor. Here, in the pre-snow silence,

there is time to let slip the juxtaposition of now

and then, house and street, portrait and memory.

Nothing but time to wait

for the texture of twilight to appear

on the kitchen wall, a flutter of white

to float across the face of a window. Now

I will silence the radio, pull out the knife

by its tail and prepare to cleave flesh

from bone, question from action,

time from the stillness of relics.

__________________________

Tina Schumann’s manuscript As If (Parlor City Press) was awarded the 2010 Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. Her full manuscript was named a finalist in the 2014 Four Way Books Intro Prize and the 2011 National Poetry Series. She is the recipient of the 2009 American Poet Prize and a Pushcart nominee. Schumann is the Assistant Director of Artsmith.org and editor of the forthcoming anthology, Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents. She holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University and her poems have appeared in various publications including The American Poetry Journal, Ascent, Cimarron Review, Crab Creek Review, Midwest Quarterly, Nimrod, Palabra, Parabola, Poemeleon, Poetry International, San Pedro River Review, SubTerrain, Terrain.org, Raven Chronicles and the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. You can read more about Tina's work at http://www.tinaschumann.com/

Thanks to Tina for sharing her tattoo 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: David Tomas Martinez

Our next tattooed poet is David Tomas Martinez, who hails from Houston.

David, as you can see in his photo, has a lot of tattoos. He also had a lot to say about his work:

"It was difficult to chose just one tattoo for this blog post. I like to say I have 6 tattoos: my right arm, left arm, complete back piece, a neck piece, a chest piece, and a tattoo above my right knee. (I know, the obligatory random knee tattoo.) I also like to say that they are not tattoos but fortuitous birth marks. Nobody ever seems to accept these explanations."

Some of our featured poets don't say a lot about their work. Others, like David, are generous with their words. I always love reading the lengthier explanations of peoples' work. And, I will turn it back over to David:

"Bryan Romero has done all my work. Other artists have touched my skin, but he has either covered their work or relined their work to incorporate it better in to our designs. Our process for tattooing usually goes like this: I text Brian and let him know I'm coming by. I discuss with him what ideas I have for my next tattoo. Mostly he thinks their good but once in awhile he will say that is impossible. Then, he draws it up over the span of a week or so. I look at it, making tweaks if any are needed. I usually defer to what he thinks, he being the professional. (I'm not sure if I am professional at anything.) We have been doing this routine for about ten years, when I first came to get 'home boy' tattooed on my biceps while wearing a cowboy shirt with roses on it. We quickly became friends, and I have lived in happy tattoo monogamy ever since. (Though I let him whore himself out to others.) He currently works at Sabertooth Tattoo in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego, California.

Two identity forming states, identifying myself as a writer and Chican@, have really shaped my tattoos. For instance, I have a pistolera, or a lady gun fighter on my back, which is an homage to my ethnicity. But I also have a plume on my right forearm and a sword on my left forearm, a nod to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's saying, 'the pen is mightier than the sword.' And sometimes these two states of identity will intersect, in the form of a candy skull with a candle burning on top of it, a kind of Chican@ Shakespeare, or 'Chakespeare' if you will.

I picked for my featured tattoo, which is like picking a favorite child, which is always a reality but not something you go around bragging about, the last tattoo Brian chiseled on my body, my Sarabande Books tattoo:

My first collection of poetry, Hustle, will be published by Sarabande; the book is due out in May of 2014. This was quite an honor to have such a wonderful independent press putting my work in the world. My tattoo artist, Brian, has designed the book cover. As a way of solidifying this accomplishment, I can't hold the book until 2014, I got the book cover design tattooed on my leg. And for good measure I got Sarabande's logo tattooed on the side of my hand. My friend and mentor, Tony Hoagland saw the tattoo and told me, 'You're going to have a long career, you should slow down or you wont have any room for the other books.' By that I'm pretty sure he meant, 'Go work on a critical essay, then publish it.' Tony goes hard. Many of my tattoos mark some transition or accomplishment in my life. A sort of journal that everyone can read."

David added some advice to tattoo rookies everywhere, echoing a sentiment felt by many:

"...please please please (best James Brown voice) do not just go in a tattoo shop, point at the board and drunkenly yell, "I want that one!" Because when I am waiting in line at the grocery store or, god forbid, a line for an amusement park ride that will take a month and I have to see your misspelled ex-boyfriend's name, or a heart with Budweiser on the scroll, or Rainbow Brite with blood shot eyes and a joint in her hand, I will be angry. Don't do that to us. Think about what you want and pay your tattoo artist according to their worth. I have too many friends that have too many horror stories about getting tattooed. Do not be one of these people. Do your research."

The poem David sent us has a tattoo in it, as well. "The poem I picked, 'Coveralls' has an important 'scene' where my coworker, Lucy (and let us not forget the Latin root, luz, or light) shows me a tattoo she had." He adds, "I hope you enjoy the poem and I am glad to be apart of this wonderful jamming of two of my favorite passions! Writing! Tattoos!"

COVERALLS

The orange coveralls flamed around me in one-size-fits-all,
and no matter how I stood, they slouched and bent me.

In the shipyard there were no mirrors
but in the ocean’s reflection or the pools in the dry docks
I could see how the leathers covered my boney clavicle
and my arms were only as wide as my torch.

I interviewed in a flower-splattered rayon,
but was hired because my uncle was foreman.

In training, I met Lucy.

Straightening out the crooked cuts in my bulkheads
she showed me how an orange stream pours off a perfect bevel.

Once in the bilges, I asked what brought her
to the bottom of this boat, measuring and cutting walls.

Pulling off her suede glove,

wiping sweat and ash away,
on her hand shone a green 13.

Secretaries don’t have tattoos,
muffled through her respirator.

And by lunch,
we were burnt by sparks,
by three we sneezed black,
but the foreman flirted with her
using the last banging mallets
to get close and whisper.

Wrenching hoses
from our torches,
on our neck, metallic dust
ignited in the sun.

The top half
of her coveralls,
unbuttoned and wrapped,
slowly melted down
as the whistles blew.

After training,
I worked on frigates,
she worked on tankers,

I walked by her worksite
and Lucy’d be cutting
a tanker’s wall,

golden ashes
dropping from
a chariot
of rusted pipe
and planks.

Looking up
shaking the wind,
shaking a hole
in my coveralls,

from ankle to knee gone,
the thin blue cloth gone;

I watched Lucy rise.

~ ~ ~

When not writing bios or sonnets in bathroom stalls, David Tomas Martinez lurks along the San Diego trolley lines giving hugs to the homegirls and daps to the homeboys, all the while remarking how the cigarette butts on the ground look like petals on a wet, black bough. His work has been published in Forklift Ohio, San Diego Writer's Ink (Volumes 2 and 3), Charlotte Journal, Poetry International, and he has been the featured poet for Border Voices. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Houston's Creative Writing program, with an emphasis in Poetry. Martinez is also the Reviews and Interviews Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle, will be released in 2014 by Sarabande Books.

Thanks to David for his extensive share of poetry and ink with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 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.