The Tattooed Poets Project: EJ Koh

Today's tattooed poet is EJ Koh, who sent this incredible tattoo:

EJ credits this revolver/fountain pen tattoo to RuFi (Russ) Designs at Outer Limits in Costa Mesa, CA. "To me the design was self-explanatory and simple," EJ explained. "Later on, I added my parents' names beneath the revolver."

EJ sent us this poem:

Ingredients for Memories That Can Be Used As Explosives

  

I am not sad anymore; I am on the rooftop of my life

cheering until my body of hallways opens, jade and steaming.

When a pope dies tradition says to hit his head with a silver

hammer 3 times to see if he’s alive: koong koong koong koong.

I’ve been so many popes. The shells of laughing are cooked.

Open the door and let them know I am not sad anymore.

Not once carrying my lunch pail soul with bright green fingernails—

Can a soul be excited to tears? That’s the one time a soul is excited.

I am together - feel my forehead - I am young

but I always forget what I meant to say; except I am alive!

And I will not jump from here because the wind is coming.

It has a beak and a tooth and has heard I am not sad anymore.

~ ~ ~

EJ Koh is a poet and translator of Korean literary works. Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, Columbia Review, World Literature Today, and Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics from Black Ocean Press (ed. Andrew Ridker, 2014). She has been featured in Flavorwire’s 23 People Who Will Make You Care About Poetry and Culture Trip’s 10 Young American Poets Changing the Face of Poetry. She was awarded a Kundiman Fellowship and The MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry and Literary Translation at Columbia University in New York. She currently lectures at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, WA.

Thanks to EJ Koh for sharing her wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

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.

Repost: Amanda's Hands Are Well-Armed

It seems silly to not post anything when I have the time and five years of material that is wandering the ether. So, I am pledging to dredge up some oldies but goodies, should I find myself lacking new material for any given day. That said, here we have a post that originally went live on February 1, 2009. Enjoy!

~ ~ ~

I met Amanda in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago on a cold day in January. She wasn't wearing gloves which, despite the cold, was a good thing, as her hands bore a couple of nifty tattoos that really flashed in the sunlight.

Unfortunately for me, I was bogged down with a bag of groceries and dry cleaning, so I wasn't in any position to take pictures.

I did manage to chat with Amanda briefly, and I told her about Tattoosday. I passed her my card and asked her to email me if she was interested in sharing.

I was happy to hear from her a day or two later and, this past weekend, sat and chatted with her at a local Starbucks. It was there that I got to see her tattooed hands in all their glory:


Amanda hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and moved to New York several years back to pursue her dream of an artistic career. She estimates that her body is 30% inked, most of which was done by her home town artist Steve Drew, who works out of a shop called Irezumi Body Art.

She was looking around for an artist in New York, when she accompanied a friend to Red Rocket Tattoo in Manhattan. There, Mike Bellamy was working with her friend on a concept sleeve. Amanda liked what she saw and started working with Mr. Bellamy on her hand guns.

You can see other Tattoosday-featured work by Mike Bellamy here.

So, why put guns on your hands, of all places? Amanda says it was an aesthetic decision, and not any sort of moral or political statement. Nor, she says, was it necessarily a nod to her roots in Kansas City.


Rather, Amanda wanted a whimsical tattoo that anchored what will become, eventually, full sleeves. The old six-shooter style of revolver is a traditional tattoo, in some senses (see previous gun-themed tattoos here).


But Amanda wanted her hand guns to be colorful and depict a feminine side, reminiscent of a weapon tucked into a saloon-girl's garter belt. The red roses, set into the handles, give the guns a softer edge. Their placement on the hands recall a childlike innocence, reminding one of the gesture kids make when they pretend their hands are toy guns.

Amanda said that she had these inked in one sitting, each gun taking about an hour and a half each. Mike Bellamy inked the outline on each hand first, then went back and did the color and shading on both. How did it feel? "The most intense pain I've ever felt," said Amanda, "especially on the knuckles".

Thanks to Amanda for sharing her guns here on Tattoosday! We look forward to seeing more of your ink in the future!

This entry is ©2009, 2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website 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.

Melissa Got Her Gun

Last May, on the first day of the New York City Tattoo Convention, I was almost thirty blocks away from the Roseland Ballroom, where the three-day event takes place, when I bright flash of yellow hair caught my eye on Broadway.

I was about to meet Melissa "Alabama" Graves.

Her bright yellow hair was not the only thing I noticed - she was also heavily-tattooed.

I stopped to talk to her, but she was on her way to an appointment, but she seemed open to being featured on Tattoosday and she assured me she'd make time for me to interview her the next day, Saturday, at the convention.

Melissa is a model and she is a striking figure - despite her tiny frame, she fills a room with her personality and she commands a great presence.

Not to mention, her bright hairstyle makes her easy to spot in a crowded tattoo convention. She was kind enough to spend a significant amount of time with me talking about her tattoos. I could have written much more, but had to pare down our conversation for brevity's sake.

Incidentally, this is my last remaining item from 2012, and I'd like to think I've saved one of the best for last.

Among her tattoos, Melissa chose to share the gun inked on her right thigh:

Here's a closer look:

She credited this work to Gene Coffey at Tattoo Culture in Brooklyn, explaining that she was thrilled that he was able to depict so well this image of a .45 Magnum, tattooed to scale.

Melissa gave me the nitty-gritty about why she had a gun, specifically this gun, inked on her thigh:

“I met this guy a long time ago, his name was Blackie ... he was ripped and tattooed and rockabilly and sexy and he had this, you know, powerful thing about him … He moved away with his girlfriend, it must’ve been … five years ago and the girlfriend and him had been together for a while, and I had a crush on him for a long time …[when] him and the girlfriend are breaking up and, this must’ve been 2008 ... I went on vacation from my job at the beginning of 2009 ... He talked me into going out to California with him and ... I went out to California and we had a week-long vacation together that was probably the most ... fun time I ever had with somebody. And the best sex I ever had in my entire life.

And one of the things we did together was we went to the Downtown L.A. gun range and I fired his .45 magnum in that gun range wearing a mini skirt and six-inch stiletto heels … the chunky heels ... and the guys in the gun range were like, this girl cannot fire this gun … it’s like a cannon of a gun ... it’s life size, compared to little me ... and, you know, um, I weigh a little bit more now than I did back then, but only like five pounds more, and they were like, she still can’t fire this gun. In those heels? No. And I said, Oh yeah I can fire this gun, and I was just ballsing it and I took the gun and I fired it and I asked for the most bizarre absurd targets. And I fired that gun and I hit every target. And ... he was so impressed. It turned him on. And we went back home after I fired that gun. I saved every target and we had the best sex afterwards, I mean, he was just so turned on that I could fire a gun that well. And I’ll never forget that experience. It was like, I could fire a gun and hit a target in the forehead and it was just like really exciting, girl power kind of thing and I left L.A. and he left me at the airport and said ... I’ll see you later kid.”

She added that "he was cordial enough after we broke up when I got the idea for the tattoo to scan the gun and send me the image of the gun."

Melissa praised Gene Coffey, the tattoo artist, to no end. He was responsible for the art on her left leg, which she said he had worked on while he was still an apprentice.

What's cool about the tattoo, as well, as that it circles the thigh, with a garter and a badge:

Melissa added,

"The gun signifies a lot to me because I have a broken heart [seen in top photo on her lower abdomen] ... that's broken and stitched back together ... the gun is protecting it ... this gun, I can pull out and say Don't break my heart ... but it's a metaphorical thing - I would never want to hurt somebody ... I'm the sheriff of my heart. I guard my heart and I police my heart and I have my gun to protect it."

She wanted to make sure we credited Gene for this work that she entrusted with him. "He's a really talented artist and ... he's going to do the rest of my right leg." We also featured a really cool sleeve by Gene last year here.

Thanks to Melissa for sharing her gun (and time) with us here on Tattoosday! You can check out her website here.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website 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.