The Tattooed Poets Project: Julie Platt

Today's poem comes to us from Julie Platt. It's our first sestina in this year's Tattooed Poet's Project:

STEADFAST MUZZLES

I traveled to this place to earn this sentence: The last blue

tiger stood stoic, slate-blue, stone-blue, still, behind my gun’s

mouth and I did not take him. And yet I only half-believed

the whispers that the blue tiger’s singularity could stay

wickedness, and make god stand still. The thicket, infinite

has caught me…Say you bought a pouch of stones

soaked in tiger piss—to lure him. Then more stones

divided and divided from the trail you left, pointing at blue

shadows everywhere. You might think you had infinite

luck; you could squat under the leaves, polish your singular gun

and think that if you learned the land’s tongue you could stay

awake here, blending into bramblescapes…You trust that to live

is to represent in your heart what is impossible, and to believe

it when it steps outside. This is why I had to go back for the stones,

each and every one, lest the tiger follow…I stayed

with some dark-skinned people for a while, and they offered blue

ochre for my face, and frowned, then laughed at my gun

as if I had been fashioning a trap for something infinite,

some god-animal with petrifying eyes. Still I had infinite

patience, I had a gun, I had that bag of stones and a live

wire from my mind to something edgeless there, and I was gunning

for the prize, and for its blessing. But those dreadful stones

divided, multiplied, obscene miracle in my hands, the blue

unwieldy flood of them and their stink, and I couldn’t stay

under cover. I ran out into the tiger maw and stayed

there, and prayed for just one…Do you think the infinite

machine is kind? Do you think it folds you in its blue

shade like a papoose, uncovers your eyes slowly, lets you live

with each expanding rapture, as with a single stone?

Never, stones are never one in number…I had my gun

cocked a thousand times in my mind, I had my gun

and I had to take the tiger when it pawed out, I told myself to stay

awake, I had my dream of a singular god, I had the stones,

I had the stones, the stones had me, the god had me, the infinite

and me and all our steadfast muzzles diving and dividing, still alive

in the dividing, how can I say the sentence that I’ve earned: O blue

one, look how I slide my gun into my mouth to mute my infinite

tongue, tiger, stay where I can see you singular, take me alive

tiger, and roll these stones away, their numberless, horrific blue.

Be sure to check out Julie's tattoo over on Tattoosday here.

Julie Platt was born and raised in Pittsburgh and now lives in Michigan. Her print poetry chapbook, In the Kingdom of My Familiar, was published by Tilt Press in 2008. My mini e-chapbook, Imitation Animals, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2009. Two poems from
Imitation Animals were selected to appear in Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2010. My work will also appear in the forthcoming e-anthology Poems to Sweat By: Hungry Young Poets 2009, published by VanVinkinroy's Indie e-Book Emporium.

Thanks to Julie for sharing her poetry with us here on BillyBlog!

[If you enjoyed the sestina form, I will shamelessly plug my own entry in last year's Tattooed Poets Project, by linking my "Maiden Sestina" here.]

The Tattooed Poets Project, Day 27: William Dickenson Cohen

I'm going to be a greedy little blogger today and share one of my own poems (and one of my tattoos). The following poem takes the form of a sestina (clink link to see what makes a sestina). A hearty thank you to Doriane Laux for the advice and encouragement in publishing this here.

MAIDEN SESTINA

This is my maiden sestina, an initial attempt

At the celebrated form. Instead of pencil or ink,

I compose on a glowing screen. Two curious angels

Watch over me as I write, guiding my trembling hands

As they type. I pray for the steadiness of a tattoo

Artist, filling the flesh with a myriad of color.

Of course, my words are shaded black and white, not color,

And like any awkward apprentice’s nervous attempt

At needling a sketchy, rudimentary tattoo,

I try to keep it simple, hardly complicated ink.

My fingers blur as they strike the keyboard. I use my hands

To breathe my song, channeling the voices of the Angels.

Not that I claim to be a spokesman for the Angels.

My ego does not allow such nonsense. The bright color

Of my embarrassment flushes my face, tinges my hands

As I continue to sing my sestina, as I tempt

the words to form lines, the lines to form stanzas, the black ink

Jumping off of the page, “popping,” they say, like a tattoo

Glimmering on the flesh, hovering over skin. That, too,

Is the work of buzzing artists and guardian angels.

It takes a steady hand and an exquisite eye to ink

The skin, to fill a fleshy canvas with vibrant color.

I panic seeing my sweaty palms making an attempt

At art, transcendent. I could never trust my bumbling hands

To alter the landscape of another man. When one hands

The body over to an artist as they prepare to tattoo,

It is an intimacy, a leap of faith, as they tempt

the tingling nerves, touching skin, mating curves with angles,

no easy task when each canvas is a different color,

each shade an alternate universe absorbing the ink.

I marvel at the multitudes of passers-by with ink

Decorating arms and legs, necks and backs, breasts, feet and hands

Of the painted – residents, tourists, all races, colors.

I cannot draw a fig. I only write about tattoos-

Whether they be snakes, skulls, dragons, butterflies, or angels.

The very least that I can do is offer this attempt.

I tempt Fate with this, my maiden sestina, from thought to cursor to ink.

I may not possess the gift of the angels, or an artist’s steady hands,

But in every tattoo, I see poetry. In every poem, color.

William Dickenson Cohen, known more commonly as Bill Cohen, is a Hawaii-raised, L.A.-educated, Brooklyn-acclimated blogger and poet who feels awkward writing his own bio for his own blog.

He was most prolific poetically in the 1990's, when he had several dozen poems published in numerous small press magazines, including Atom Mind, Pudding, Lilliput Review, The Rockford Review and paperplates. One of his poems was included in the anthology Essential Love.

Please check out one of his tattoos here.