The Tattooed Poets Project: Rob Talbert

Today's poem comes to us from Rob Talbert:

it became okay

Right now is fleeting

with the room to do

what was planned.

I have purpose to build

in a city and backyard,

in a method

where some days can

do the miraculous

thing of standing out.

I haven’t kept track

of all my Thursdays.

Ingenious ocean,

are you still waiting

for life to crawl

back into you? I need

to be on time for that.

My body is mostly you;

the tide coming and going

like breath. There are

dreams and people I’d

very much like to have back.

I lost them in hotels

and airports and locker

rooms and bars. I lost

them in Vermont fields

and gas stations. Going

back to the beginning

is a good place to start,

the first door,

the head of the oroboros,

the place in the knot where,

if pulled, will undo and return.

Do you know where

they are, ocean?

My fragments. My

sleeplessness. I feel no need

to stop walking just

because the land runs out.

That’s stubborn.

For the billionth time

the sun came out.

An additional poem, entitled "you jumped," can be seen (and heard) over at The 2River View. I recommend this also because you can hear Rob reading the poem by clicking on the audio player at the top of the page.

Please head over to Tattoosday to see one of Rob's tattoos here.

Rob Talbert is a native Texan and currently pursuing his MFA at Virginia Tech. His poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review. He was selected for 2009 Best of the Net and nominated for 2009 and 2010 Best New Poets.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Lea Banks

Today's poem is from Lea Banks:

IT WAS NOTHING

Nothing is so beautiful as spring.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Something like the ride on the Tilt-A-Wheel,

the teasing carnie with the snake tattoo. Something

like his boarding house room with the meltdown

mattress floor. Milk bottle of vodka and orange juice,

just a little vitamin C to help me dance until the ceiling

exploded. Woke up with nothing on but a Heavy Metal

tee shirt. Naked smoke rings blown from his scratched

mouth next to my ear, a torpedo. My hands

covered my throat. His curdled breath demanded

me watch where his snake started — and ended.

Something like being thrown hollow and naked

into a pool I couldn’t swim in, so-huddled

with death. This time it was a man carrying

me to poolside. His fingers inside my gasping

mouth, hooked between my teeth and cheek.

Told me to drink more wine, stop that screaming.

Something like being fucked drunk and willing

the waves of the lake over the two of us

in a mad tangle of wet clothes, lips of shiny

Erie oil, fish water, dirty wine. Freezing

later under a blood-soaked moon with a teenage

blotchy-faced stranger. I was a blue slip of a thing

slimy, sodden. I slept under a van that night.

It was nothing like you said it was, mother.

It was something else entirely, father.

You weren’t there for my undoing, a volley

against those lessons that you taught or failed

to teach. I was an emergency room wide open.

Angry squall of death in a small town morgue.

It was nothing. It was nothing like the spring

it should have been, innocent and brave. Before it

cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning. Spring could

have been jumping in puddles, boggy smell

of brack, lily pads hiding sacks of eggs. A firefly

chase, a swat of black flies, rolling rolling dizzy

down hills of parachute grass — something

like the garden of Eden after the gate had closed.

Please head over to Tattoosday to check out some of Lea's tattoos here.

Lea Banks lives in Western Massachusetts. She is the author of the chapbook All of Me, (Booksmyth Press, 2008). She was a finalist for The Pavel Srut Fellowship in Prague and had two poems nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Banks is the founder of the nationally-known Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, MA and editor of Oscillation: Poetry in Motion. She was the former poetry editor of The Equinox and editorial assistant for the Marlboro Review. She attended New England College’s MFA program, facilitated stroke survivors’ writing workshops, and is a full-time poet, community organizer, freelance editor and writer. Banks has published in several journals including Poetry Northwest, Slipstream, Diner, and American Poetry Journal. See more here: www.leabanks.com.

Thanks again to Lea for sharing her poem with us on the Tattooed Poets Project!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jackie Sheeler

Today's poem comes to us from Jackie Sheeler, who appeared last year on BillyBlog as part of the Tattooed Poets Project.

The New Yorker Fashion Issue


They strike me hard tonight, those sexy girls
gripping cell phones and voluptuous

decanters of cologne in their perfect fingers.
Moist and open-mouthed, as if another

tongue flicked across the plump low
lips beneath their Prada hems and slim

lace boundaries of panty—the best lick
coming just as the camera-eye winks.

Lipstick and fishnets, lizard handbags, jeans:
page upon page of orgasmic totems

that our own newly-dampened crotches
are meant to insist we must buy.

Be sure to head over to Tattoosday to see Jackie's latest tattoo here.

Jackie Sheeler is a poet, musician, and performance artist in New York City. You can also read her blog, Get Angry With Me, here, or visit her band, Talk Engine, on MySpace Music here. Her other site www.poetz.com is being redesigned and the new site is launching later this week.

Thanks again to Jackie for returning to BillyBlog!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Chenelle Milford

Today's poem comes to us from Chenelle Milford:

Little Red Riding Hood

Piano breaking as keys break beneath my bloodied fingers.
I want to knock down your house of cards glued haphazardly.

I will fall off this table without regret without seeing the sunset,
It is of no matter here in this structure; I will blow your house down.

No insurance for your house of brick, no house of stone compares,
No wolf ever shows himself before the hunter realizes his guise.

I held this wolf near only to watch him scowl away and haunt;
A hunter only hunts with a house of cards his easiest target.

His alcoholic breath could blow this house down almost too
Neatly; I’m trying not to feel out of luck with my house of cards

Blown down. You will never let me forget how you’ve blown
Before and how you will blow again, but you will forget my blow.

The Gulf Shores are the only warmth in this physical world, but your
Haunting is aiding in the cooling of the waters all around my shell.

Please be sure to head over to Tattoosday to check out a couple of Chenelle's tattoos here.

Chenelle C. Milford, a native Californian and poet, is the manager, web-designer, consultant, all-around aficionado, and archivist of the Joe Milford Poetry Show. She is the founder and editor of the new literary journal, Scythe. Additionally, she is a film-maker, writer, humanist, and a wonderful wife and mother. Together, Joe and Chenelle Milford are compiling an extensive online sonic archive, a library of archived materials that can be accessed, which share writing and impressive interviews of many of today's established and up-and-coming poets. Some of her work is displayed on New Aesthetic. She now resides in rural Georgia with her husband and two daughters. She is working on college and writing poetry as time permits.

Thanks to Chenelle for her participation in the Tattooed Poets Project!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Cathryn Cofell

Today's poem comes to us from Cathryn Cofell.

TATTOO


You can’t help but think of your virginity

as you gaze for the last time

at that pure white patch of skin,

as you stare in terror and awe

into the hazy eyes of a guy in flannel shirt

and Mighty Mouse cap who begs you

to call him Cabin Boy,

who you cling to more than god

because you have to,

because he must be your tingling salvation

as he smoothes that clean bare flesh

with his dirty-boy hands,

as he folds away your cotton tee and mouth

and promises he will be careful and

it will only hurt for a minute,

as he revs up his silver needle

and changes you forever.

You can’t help but think of that first

popped cherry

how much easier it was to give it up then

and how much more in love you are

with this strange man this time around

and not because he fills you with sugar

because he fills you with jewels,

the spill of your plain body,

the delicious dare of indelible sin,

because he savors the whole of your skin

for what it is,

for what it can be,

hungry and flaccid and old,

ruby and Goddess and Nile.

Be sure to head over to Tattoosday and see her tattoo that inspired this poem.

Cathryn Cofell is the author of five books, most recently Kamikaze Commotion (Parallel Press). She's received 40+ awards for her poetry and essays which also appear in scads of journals and anthologies. She is a zealous advocate for the arts, having served as founding Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, on the board of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and currently as Chair of the Verse Wisconsin Advisory Board and a pro-arts voice wherever she'll be heard.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Seth Berg

Today's poem from a tattooed poet comes to us from Seth Berg.

His book Muted Lines from Someone Else's Memory will be published by Dark Sky Books in July.

Here is one of the poems from that collection:

Aphasia

Ever since my wheelchair
I’ve been eating these placebos
opalescent when I was a young man
and sometimes too large
for my gag reflex
now the nurse brings me tea
and exotic fruits
chamomile and papaya
all I can do is raise a slow thumb
and repeat the phrase “pretty good”
because pretty good is universal
and the nurse will never know
that inside this crippled head
is an architect waiting
to replace the severed sky.

You can hear audio of Seth reading this poem, and others, here.

The photo above shows a couple of Seth's tattoos, but this one, over on Tattoosday, is worth a closer look.

Seth Michael Berg earned his MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University in 2003 and has since been bouncing around the country teaching, tending bar, sculpting, writing, and occasionally snowshoeing. His poems and fiction can be found in Connecticut Review, Lake Effect, Word Riot, JMWW, 13th Warrior Review, Chiron Review, BlazeVOX, Pike Magazine, Disappearing City Literary Review, and Dark Sky Magazine, among others. Berg lives in Minneapolis with his photographer wife, Ashley, their supernatural son, Oak, and their twelve-year-old English Bulldog, Bob. When not working, Berg can most likely be found indulging his addiction to hot sauce or slowing down somewhere in a forest.

Thanks to Seth for his participation in the Tattooed Poets Project!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Tameka Mullins

Today's addition to the Tattooed Poets Project is Tameka Mullins, who writes the blog Lyric Fire.

Here is a poem entitled "When You're a Writer," which she offered up for us here at BillyBlog:

When you're a writer everything is brand new or old, or used or in a state of disrepair.

When you're a writer nothing seems to be happening while everything is moving at wind whipping speed.

In the midst of a rain storm you are bone dry and searching for something to quench your thirst.

The sun could be burning white hot on your skin and you're shivering.

The opposite of light is more light and darkness floods your room with rays of glorious yellow illumination.

The world is a wonderful and awful place and your need to document and define it can be a heavenly addiction or a mind sucking curse.

Your fingers, brain, ears and your eyes are always sore and broken from overuse. You look too long, talk too much or not enough and you think everyone is your friend and if they aren't they become the enemy. There is no in between.

Your smile is wide and narrow and your teeth gleam from brushing too hard but you never change your socks because you write better when they are dirty.

No one knows that underneath your Dior suit you are wearing undergarments with the names of all of your lovers written on them in black marker so they are forever close to you.

When you're a writer people love you and loathe you for your attention to detail and your ability to forget them all together.

Short walks take hours and long train rides are over in a minute because you deem it so. Your magic is majestic and you use it for good and evil.

A writers house is a mess and immaculate and their clothes hang neatly in a tight cramped closet with boxes on shelves that haven't been opened in years. Their contents have long been forgotten by the owner.

You check your e-mail every five minutes and never open your snail mail. It piles up and now holds stains from the coffee cup.

When you're a writer everything makes sense and nothing is a mystery. Well, except for the fact that you know not why you came to write, you just do. That is your lifelong mystery to pick at and play with.

When you're a writer thoughts, passages, paragraphs and sentences don't end. They begin. Over and over and over again.

Tameka is a native Detroiter who loves writing, networking and cultivating great relationships. Her professional background includes work as a public relations professional, radio segment producer, project manager and consultant for publishing and non-profit organizations. She wrote her first poem when she was 5-years-old and it consisted of just two words: "I dream." She believes that with persistence and passion dreams can be transformed into goals which become reality. Her novel Letters to Chyna, which delves into the emotionally charged issues of adoption is currently being reviewed and considered for publication.

Check out her tattoo over on Tattoosday.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Caroline Goodwin

Today's poem was submitted by Caroline Goodwin.

Entitled "In Summer Plumage," this poem was published in Mantis (Stanford University, June 2007):

IN SUMMER PLUMAGE

Black oystercatcher. Black-necked

stilt. A patch of gnats

lifts off at my feet. Mudflat. Rot

and salt. The great egret

doubled on the water. Stick legs

bending. Approaching, my husband

in a silver canoe. Dragonflies,

kinked reeds. Something about vows.

Wreathing my head, the split light.

When I place one hand in the water,

striders collect at my wrist. Tattoo

of the eagle, the braided

leather string. Killdeer will feign

a broken wing to distract

from the nest. Golden plover. Common

snipe. Old lover who cut off all

his hair and mailed it. Shiny

as bottleflies. Kept in my desk.

And whose ring is this? Whose

feather, whose expanse of skin?

Be sure to head over to Tattoosday to see Caroline's tattoo here.

Caroline Goodwin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Sitka, Alaska in 1999 to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She teaches poetry and nonfiction writing workshops at California College of the Arts and, with Hugh and Mary Behm-Steinberg of Berkeley, is the publisher of MaCaHu poetry chapbook press.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Joseph Millar

Today's poem is from tattooed poet is Joseph Millar:

LABOR DAY

Even the bosses are sleeping late
in the dusty light of September.

The parking lot’s empty and no one cares.
No one unloads a ladder, steps on the gas

or starts up the big machines in the shop,
sanding and grinding, cutting and binding.

No one lays a flat bead of flux over a metal seam
or lowers the steel forks from a tailgate.

Shadows gather inside the sleeve
of the empty thermos beside the sink.

The bells have gone still by the channel buoy,
the wind lies down in the west,

the tuna boats rest on their tie-up lines
rocking a little, this way and that.

Labor Day was previously published in The Normal School and will appear in Joseph's third collection.

Be sure to head over to Tattoosday and see Joseph's tattoo here.

JOSEPH MILLAR is the author of Fortune, from Eastern Washington University Press.


His first collection, Overtime (2001) was finalist for the Oregon Book Award and the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins University and spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including The Southern Review, TriQuarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, DoubleTake, New Letters, Ploughshares, Manoa, and River Styx. His work has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Oregon Literary Arts and a 2008 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. In 1997 he gave up his job as a telephone installation foreman. He now lives in Raleigh, NC and teaches at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program in Oregon and yearly at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA. Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa has said, “There's a tenderness at the core of Fortune, where the commonplace becomes atypical and fantastical, and each poem possesses a voice that summons and reveals. Joseph Millar is a poet we can believe.” His third collection of poems will be published in fall of 2011 by Carnegie Mellon Press.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Erica Rivera

Today's poem comes to us from Minneapolis, from Erica Rivera:

UNTITLED FOR L

I.

His couch swallowed your stuff.

That’s how this all started.

The trinkets:

a sacral chakra rock

a grungy penny

once relied upon for luck are gone

They must have served their purpose

because they led you here

to the bear lair

where the furnace whispers

as your breath harmonizes

with his heart

beat

Just before he fell asleep

he stroked his hairy chest

and teased

“You stole my chi.”

Now sounds

estrogen will not allow you to make

thrum through the room

and his scent is so intoxicating

you’d happily bury your face

in his armpits

(as unromantic though it may seem)

Your body is tender

and sticky and sour

concerns you should have discussed

as responsible adults hover

but…

hmm...

that delicious trickle

like a sexy serum you carry inside

is worth the risk of almost anything

II.

You leave.

Reluctantly?

On the walk of shame you spy

a woman with a holy scarf

hurtling snowballs

at her boyfriend

Fog spreads across the cityscape

like a lace veil waiting to be lifted

and a pair of hoodlum teens

slogging by in saggy jeans

marvel at the balmy quality of the air tonight

It’s March, they say

The world wants to melt along with you

revealing spring, damp and pregnant with promise

You are the only thing that moves

on the road at this hour

the only one running away

from warmth on purpose

Still…

everything is bright and beautiful

and alive on the drive

despite the empty streets

you’re speeding all the same

writing at the red lights

fingers flipping through the stack of sticky notes

and when the lines won’t be contained

you know you’re a goner

III.

You undress at home.

Alone.

And notice you’re holding

his sock hostage

by mistake

A note to self is made:

Do not launder

as eventually you’ll shower

and the traces of him on your skin

will be erased

keep at least

this one piece

of evidence

just in case…

Silence descends and

the place his fist rested on your chest

as he surrendered to incessant sleep twitches

aches in his absence

And it’s then you realize what you missed

in all those agonizing months of waiting

was not sex per se

What you ached for was laughter

the kind of giggling that rattles your ribcage

and leaves you breathless and blushing

you can do everything solo

except incite that level of silliness

in yourself

What you hungered for

was his insistent grip on your neck

fingers in forbidden places

hands so hot they thawed the knots

your (overrated) independence earned

IV.

A man who didn’t want you

once declared,

“You are demanding fire.”

He swore a fearless suitor would arrive

in time and stay

despite the writing cyclone

What if this is him

and instead

you

are the one

afraid of flames?

V.

There’s a song that goes,

“Someday someone’s

gonna ask you

a question

you should say yes to”

You would have liked to author that

because this is not a poem

(you don’t know how to write those anymore)

but a tired attempt at making sense

of that which has no words.

Erica Rivera is the author of Insatiable: A Young Mother’s Struggle with Anorexia (Berkley, 2009). She is the former first-place winner of the Powderhorn Writer’s Festival and her poetry has appeared in Moon Journal, The Mirage, and Writer’s Journal. She blogs at http://www.maneaterbook.com/blog.htm.

Head on over to BillyBlog to see one of Erica's tattoos here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Christine Hamm

Today's poem comes to us from here in New York City, from Christine Hamm.

Teen Angel

That year, everyone had your same name,
but spelled it with an "S". Black beauties

in baggies at the bottom of your purse.
A 28-year-old boyfriend. Your whispers

that my bangs made me look retarded.
I watched you break the mirror in your

locker with your hands, then stare at
the tiny blood like it was something

new. Drunk in the backseat of my car
on the way to a party. A handful of aspirin.

Some kind of song, that summer, with your
name over and over. I never knew how to

look at you, quite, one eye fixed just
a finger's breadth to the left of the other.

Christine is a PhD candidate in English Literature, teaches at CUNY in New York City, and was runner-up to the Queens Poet Laureate. Her second book of poetry, Saints & Cannibals, is coming out this spring. For more about her, go to her blog here.

To see Christine's tattoo, head over to Tattoosday here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Mark Nickels

Today's poem is from Mark Nickels.

It appears in his book Cicada, published in 2000 by Rattapallax Press. Mark adds that "it seems as if the poem and the tattoo (click here to see the tattoo on Tattoosday) come from the same source, but whether the poem or the tattoo came first, I couldn't say anymore".

This Kindled by Gaude Virgo Salutata, A Motet by John Dunstable c.1400

Slow spreading English music, as though
we watched a pale drawing off of the night
from delicate fields, and heard a haunt
of griffins in a fog close by the house.
How one of the griffins, without fire, has wrought,
by a concentration of time, a face in gnarled elm wood
with a spell hidden in his hands: to warp, to whorl the wood,
to make water freeze and thaw and unvisibly fade,
to make fire ash, to make fire even without fire,
and carve an eddy in the air that turns his maneuver
into a major wind: kissing the barn wood high up,
over filling the air over the ocean,
causing a wrinkle in the salt drift, engendering thunder.
How a griffin loves with his hands the way
we walk without shoes after winter,
painfully, for the first time in a year.
But after all this is spoken of, it is the tenderness
I haven't stolen for this poem: the griffins
droning after the rain, touching the wood
to make a face in the bole of a tree, another hybrid,
one being fallen into someone else.

Mark Nickels lives in New York City. His book Cicada was published by Rattapallax Press in 2000. He has won the Milton Dorfman Prize (1996), the Ann Stafford Prize from USC (2002) and been a finalist and semi-finalist at Lyric Recovery Festival (Carnegie Hall). He is a 2006 New York State Arts Foundation Fellow in fiction, and two poems ("Shells" and "The Twentieth Century" from his 2o00 collection were recently selected for inclusion in the on-line archive of the Poetry Foundation (aka Poetry).

Thanks to Mark for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Nikoletta Nousiopoulos

Today's poem is from Nikoletta Nousiopoulos:

the dream he won’t get out of

white walls are free wings


blank open me’s
there is no voice but heart-fires

                  or the way he sounded before I heard myself speak

shocked surged in daydream
                                                        that “other world”

where I tread words, sometimes
to trip out of dream is to fall and skin
                        the knees

Nikoletta Nousiopoulos holds a MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her poems have appeared in elimae, South Jersey Underground, 2River, and Harpur Palate. She was a 2010 finalist for the Philbrick Poetry Award, and was a winner of the 2009 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. Her first book all the dead goats was released in 2010 from Little Red Tree Publishing.

Please head over to Tattoosday to see one of Ms. Nousiopoulos's tattoos here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Adam Deutsch

Our second installment of this year's Tattooed Poets Project also appeared last year on the site (here).

Adam chose to share this poem, which appeared over on No Tell Motel:

Percolator Ode

I know I’m rough while I sleep but first
thing, don’t I always awaken to you?
When can’t I see myself in any part
of your bodily shine? Call me crazy.
Call me addicted, a lack of grace
in the dark kitchen where my hands
are auto-mechanical in intention to take you
apart and put you back together, fresh
grind and the cleanest cold water,
turn you on with no switch, just a plug
and leave you for a few minutes to pout
and simmer. A love, happy happy love
handle curve I return to, tightly hold. Lift
into a hot little dance. Wild pursuits and mad
ecstatic escapes just for me, and nothing at all
like some ancient Grecian counterpart. No
moments are trapped, silently remaining etched
on your skin. You’re constant reflection
of the world that surrounds us now. Right Now,
proof of our obligation to evolve, surrender
all impression and memory, fully conscious and back-
casting the light of our Being who engirds, total.
You’re the urn I empty in morning, container
I want to rest in. This is my last will:
burn my entire body slowly slow
to a crisp carbonic brick, tap my big
charred toe so I’m crumbled into bits
to be ground. Put me through the grinder.
I’ll fit in your filter, saturate your half-full drink,
asleep and stainlessly filtered within you.
You: always here. Always morning.

Please check out Adam's Emersonian tattoo over on Tattoosday here.

Adam Deutsch was born on Long Island, New York and has his M.A. from Hofstra University (2005) and M.F.A. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008). He's been on the editorial staff of a number of presses and journals, including Ninth Letter and Barn Owl Review. He presently works in higher education all over San Diego, and is the editor of Cooper Dillon Books.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Theresa Senato Edwards

We're launching the 2nd annual BillyBlog-Tattoosday National Poetry Month project with the following poem by Theresa Edwards:

Holly Rose

~

My eyes listen to the tattoo artist

a dance of curls beneath a winter hat

he wears inside his tattoo parlor.

The Joker tattoo on his inner right arm,

ear lobes half moons of studs.

All of a sudden, my ears

the snap of sterile vanilla gloves,

buzzing resonance of metal in air

as he tests his machine then quietly

applies the pattern for my third tattoo.

Cigarette smoke lightly shades

the air, maneuvers down my throat.

I'm not ready for the pain that

begins the outline on my stomach,

left of my belly button.

A sharp, blackened ripping of my body

made by covered hands that guide

the tool's cut, then wipe my blood into the past.

The stale room presses deep, sucking color from my face

as sound carves symbols of my parents.

I have nothing to hold onto,

his lean legs straddle the chair's

side; I imagine them against me

as I try to clutch leather before my husband's

thick, strong body takes its place in my mind.

Needles press just below my ribs,

form a new genus on skin:

holly vine entwines thorn-stem of rose.

Vine and stem fuse in remembrance:

holly for December (my father's birthday month),

rose for June (my mother's).

Their inked tribute lost momentarily

in my obsession: younger man, artist's

art on me.

~

I go back for color;

go back for him,

This time lidocaine two hours before

helps numb the needle's entry.

His winter hat with “FUCK YOU”

on the back. Clean, blue gloves

pour ink in tiny, sterile plastic.

I follow his blue eyes, his grey

chin hairs I stroke in my mind.

Came in three hours ago,

turned the heat on for you, he says.

I'm hot, flushed below my inked flower,

near my husband's touch

the night before.

I laugh, green-needle drone cutting,

shading, skin beneath skin

until the lidocaine wears off.

He asks if it hurts.

Excruciating, I think.

This is it for me. I say.

Last time in this place.

He rattles my dark fantasy,

loudly snaps the latex off his hands,

says, Maybe I'll see ya

not for a tattoo.

My husband's trust along my thighs,

his goodness in every

colored cut below my heart.

Holly Rose: my parents love,

my own reminder of loyalty I'll wear

with chance of only fading.

I listen

but leave the noise behind.

"Holly Rose" was first published here at Seven CirclePress, and is reprinted with Ms. Edwards blessing.

Theresa Senato Edwards’ poetry is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review's second print anthology and in Blue Earth Review's spring 2010 print issue. She has a poem forthcoming online in Pirene's Fountain, and other poems can be found online at Autumn Sky Poetry, Stirring, Press 1, Seven CirclePress, decomP, AdmitTwo, Chronogram, and elsewhere. She tutors writing at Marist College and is founder/editor/publisher/blogger of Holly Rose Review.

Check out Theresa's Holly Rose tattoo over at Tattoosday, here.