The Tattooed Poets Project: Laura Goode

Today's tattooed poet is Laura Goode.

I had the distinct pleasure of recommending a shop to Laura back in January when she was planning on getting a new tattoo in Los Angeles. Knowing she was going to be near Pasadena, a lovely city I once called home, I suggested Resurrection Tattoo and she was very happy with the experience. This is what she got: 

"My newest tattoo, a peacock feather, is an homage of sorts to my friend Jon, who died of cancer on January 20, 2011. Jon’s middle name was Skanda; Skanda is a Hindu god associated with the sword, symbolizing his protection, and the peacock, symbolizing his destruction of the ego. Skanda is often depicted riding around on a magic peacock, and I like to picture Jon doing that now.

The particularity of Jon, and the shape and singularity of the hole his absence leaves in my life, was that he was not just friend to me, but more than that, sometimes transcendently, he was collaborator. Our relationship was marked by fervent bursts of art. He starred in, and photographed, the first play I ever wrote. He art-directed my second. He took the author photo for the jacket of my first novel. He was my colleague, my interlocutor, in innumerable conversations about queer theory and Chinese propaganda art and writing and Aphex Twin and, eventually, cancer. He called the Facebook album of my author photos 'Portrait of An Author As A Young Author’s Portrait.' He told me that if there were ever a Lifetime movie made about my life, it would be titled 'Laura Goode: Heart of Gold, Womb of Steel.' During a period of time in our lives marked by wild, leaping growth, Jon wove so many fibers into the fabric of my initiation as an artist. I hope I did the same in his, but I don’t have the luxury of asking him.

For all these reasons, it felt appropriate to mark Jon’s impact on my life, as well as the impact of his departure from it, with a work of art. I got the feather at Resurrection in Pasadena with one of my and Jon’s best friends, Meera Menon, who got her own feather for Jon. Afterwards, Meera and I talked about how we experienced the pain of paying homage to him in a skin-abrading way: it doesn’t hurt as much as losing him, I told her I had been thinking. We confided that we both thought the pain brought us somehow closer to Jon, closer to how much pain he had experienced himself.

I look at Jon’s feather now, knowing it will walk with me always, and its splashes of wild color, its heady plumage, bring me some of the joy that Jon himself once brought me. As Skanda’s paradoxical peacock illuminates, death destroys the ego, and both the pain of losing Jon and the more literal pain of memorializing him physically have humbled me. In life Jon raised me up to the rafters of the imagination, and in death he brought me back down to earth. The below poem, I think, celebrates both contributions."

What The Body Becomes 

Look up in wonder: the recluse
& the moors have come in.

The garden’s elegant logic, a mystic
event, greening. A return, if one

is willing, to the fine dark clay
earth. A channel somehow

open; another closed irrevocably.
I have so much still to say.

The rite of production
is one, too, of consumption—

the coal, wood, even peat
of day. Of life. Renewable

resources. The fact
of heat. We, miners

exhorting the earth
to give us back the dead.

This is what the body becomes:
the sustenance of another.

~ ~ ~

Laura Goode's interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens, Sister Mischief, was released by Candlewick Press in 2011. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Feministing, The Faster Times, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Dossier, Slope, Fawlt, and other publications. She is currently producing her first feature film, FARAH GOES BANG, co-written with the filmmaker Meera Menon. Laura was raised outside Minneapolis, received her BA and MFA from Columbia University, and now lives in San Francisco; you can follow her on Twitter @lauragoode.


Thanks to Laura for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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: Laura Goode

Today's tattooed poet is Laura Goode.

I had the distinct pleasure of recommending a shop to Laura back in January when she was planning on getting a new tattoo in Los Angeles. Knowing she was going to be near Pasadena, a lovely city I once called home, I suggested Resurrection Tattoo and she was very happy with the experience. This is what she got: 

"My newest tattoo, a peacock feather, is an homage of sorts to my friend Jon, who died of cancer on January 20, 2011. Jon’s middle name was Skanda; Skanda is a Hindu god associated with the sword, symbolizing his protection, and the peacock, symbolizing his destruction of the ego. Skanda is often depicted riding around on a magic peacock, and I like to picture Jon doing that now.

The particularity of Jon, and the shape and singularity of the hole his absence leaves in my life, was that he was not just friend to me, but more than that, sometimes transcendently, he was collaborator. Our relationship was marked by fervent bursts of art. He starred in, and photographed, the first play I ever wrote. He art-directed my second. He took the author photo for the jacket of my first novel. He was my colleague, my interlocutor, in innumerable conversations about queer theory and Chinese propaganda art and writing and Aphex Twin and, eventually, cancer. He called the Facebook album of my author photos 'Portrait of An Author As A Young Author’s Portrait.' He told me that if there were ever a Lifetime movie made about my life, it would be titled 'Laura Goode: Heart of Gold, Womb of Steel.' During a period of time in our lives marked by wild, leaping growth, Jon wove so many fibers into the fabric of my initiation as an artist. I hope I did the same in his, but I don’t have the luxury of asking him.

For all these reasons, it felt appropriate to mark Jon’s impact on my life, as well as the impact of his departure from it, with a work of art. I got the feather at Resurrection in Pasadena with one of my and Jon’s best friends, Meera Menon, who got her own feather for Jon. Afterwards, Meera and I talked about how we experienced the pain of paying homage to him in a skin-abrading way: it doesn’t hurt as much as losing him, I told her I had been thinking. We confided that we both thought the pain brought us somehow closer to Jon, closer to how much pain he had experienced himself.

I look at Jon’s feather now, knowing it will walk with me always, and its splashes of wild color, its heady plumage, bring me some of the joy that Jon himself once brought me. As Skanda’s paradoxical peacock illuminates, death destroys the ego, and both the pain of losing Jon and the more literal pain of memorializing him physically have humbled me. In life Jon raised me up to the rafters of the imagination, and in death he brought me back down to earth. The below poem, I think, celebrates both contributions."

What The Body Becomes 

Look up in wonder: the recluse
& the moors have come in.

The garden’s elegant logic, a mystic
event, greening. A return, if one

is willing, to the fine dark clay
earth. A channel somehow

open; another closed irrevocably.
I have so much still to say.

The rite of production
is one, too, of consumption—

the coal, wood, even peat
of day. Of life. Renewable

resources. The fact
of heat. We, miners

exhorting the earth
to give us back the dead.

This is what the body becomes:
the sustenance of another.

~ ~ ~

Laura Goode's interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens, Sister Mischief, was released by Candlewick Press in 2011. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Feministing, The Faster Times, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Dossier, Slope, Fawlt, and other publications. She is currently producing her first feature film, FARAH GOES BANG, co-written with the filmmaker Meera Menon. Laura was raised outside Minneapolis, received her BA and MFA from Columbia University, and now lives in San Francisco; you can follow her on Twitter @lauragoode.


Thanks to Laura for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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: Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger

Today's tattooed poet is Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger. He sent in this sweet tattoo that is ideal for a crafter of words:

Bucho explains:

"It had been 12 years since I'd last gotten a tattoo and, having moved to San Francisco in 2009 to pursue my MFA in Writing, I felt it was time for another mile-marker. I had been writing off and on since 1995, but got much more serious about the craft around 2003. By the time the summer of 2010 rolled around, I had completed one novel, half-completed two others for my program, and had a slew of publishing credits for some of my flash fiction and my poetry. I wanted something big, something grand and awe-inspiring, something that would keep me motivated to continue writing even when stuck in the worst of ruts.

I always wait a year before getting any new ink done purely to make sure I want it. Once this grace period was over, I searched out artists in the bay area and found Gordon Combs at Seventh Son Tattoo. His art was both lifelike and cartoonish at the same time but without sacrificing any seriousness and I knew that he was the one I wanted. Thankfully, after months of trying to get an appointment settled, I went in for a six-hour session and had the whole piece done in a day. What I like most about the piece is that, when my arm is bent, the feather appears to be dipped into the spilled bottle of ink on the forearm. The effect is quite nice and I've received a lot of compliments on it, even though my artist is the guy who deserves the praise."

The following was submitted by Bucho for Tattoosday:

Paris


Bless me, pages,
for I have not penned
and it has been several months
since my last confession.
I lack the paper
to summarize concisely
as the pen-born word
must be writ precisely.
If this ink runs,
my hand is unsteady.
My apologies,
I have put faith in armadas
to bring Helen home
while prayer-lighting
straw gods up in slow effigies
and my hands have
benedictioned themselves until weary.

Bless me, pages,
for I have now penned
and it had been several months
since my last confession.
I prayed at your altar
and recited your hymns,
crafted cursive letters
birthed by Seraphim.
I spun tales towards the heavens
and made deals with below
while awaiting armadas
with Helen in tow.

~~~

Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger is a 33 year old writer from Kansas City living in San Francisco. He has been writing off and on since 1995, but consistently since 2004. He holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy & Creative Writing and completed his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco in 2011.

He began as a poet, but soon moved to flash fiction and short stories, only turning to longer works of fiction once he arrived in San Francisco. He is currently working on five experimental novels in the magical realism and surrealism genres.

Among his publication credits are Red Pulp Underground, Alors, Et Tois, Gloom Cupboard (#15), Up The Staircase #1, and Santa Clara Review.

You can visit Bucho at Fists & Angles, Christs & Angels here.

Thanks to Bucho for his participation in the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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: Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger

Today's tattooed poet is Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger. He sent in this sweet tattoo that is ideal for a crafter of words:

Bucho explains:

"It had been 12 years since I'd last gotten a tattoo and, having moved to San Francisco in 2009 to pursue my MFA in Writing, I felt it was time for another mile-marker. I had been writing off and on since 1995, but got much more serious about the craft around 2003. By the time the summer of 2010 rolled around, I had completed one novel, half-completed two others for my program, and had a slew of publishing credits for some of my flash fiction and my poetry. I wanted something big, something grand and awe-inspiring, something that would keep me motivated to continue writing even when stuck in the worst of ruts.

I always wait a year before getting any new ink done purely to make sure I want it. Once this grace period was over, I searched out artists in the bay area and found Gordon Combs at Seventh Son Tattoo. His art was both lifelike and cartoonish at the same time but without sacrificing any seriousness and I knew that he was the one I wanted. Thankfully, after months of trying to get an appointment settled, I went in for a six-hour session and had the whole piece done in a day. What I like most about the piece is that, when my arm is bent, the feather appears to be dipped into the spilled bottle of ink on the forearm. The effect is quite nice and I've received a lot of compliments on it, even though my artist is the guy who deserves the praise."

The following was submitted by Bucho for Tattoosday:

Paris


Bless me, pages,
for I have not penned
and it has been several months
since my last confession.
I lack the paper
to summarize concisely
as the pen-born word
must be writ precisely.
If this ink runs,
my hand is unsteady.
My apologies,
I have put faith in armadas
to bring Helen home
while prayer-lighting
straw gods up in slow effigies
and my hands have
benedictioned themselves until weary.

Bless me, pages,
for I have now penned
and it had been several months
since my last confession.
I prayed at your altar
and recited your hymns,
crafted cursive letters
birthed by Seraphim.
I spun tales towards the heavens
and made deals with below
while awaiting armadas
with Helen in tow.

~~~

Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger is a 33 year old writer from Kansas City living in San Francisco. He has been writing off and on since 1995, but consistently since 2004. He holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy & Creative Writing and completed his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco in 2011.

He began as a poet, but soon moved to flash fiction and short stories, only turning to longer works of fiction once he arrived in San Francisco. He is currently working on five experimental novels in the magical realism and surrealism genres.

Among his publication credits are Red Pulp Underground, Alors, Et Tois, Gloom Cupboard (#15), Up The Staircase #1, and Santa Clara Review.

You can visit Bucho at Fists & Angles, Christs & Angels here.

Thanks to Bucho for his participation in the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Amy's Feathers from Hawai'i (updated)

We're tying up some loose ends from earlier this year, and figured we'd share this cool tattoo:

This piece, on the back of a woman named Amy's leg, came to us in March via e-mail from the island of Hawai'i. Amy was a student of my mother's at the University of Hawai'i, Hilo campus. Mom snapped this photo, with Amy's blessing, for Tattoosday.

We don't have any further detail on the tattoo, like the name of the artist, and the origin of the design. There are peacock feathers, and I'm guessing eagle feathers, but I can't identify the other plumage with certainty. Nonetheless, we thought it was worth sharing, and clearing out our "in" box.

Amy credits Delshay at K-Town Tattoo & Body Piercing in Kona, Hawai'i with this tattoo. She added:

"I came up with the concept. Delshay put it all together for me. It's my bouquet of feathers.

The feathers range from peacock, bustard, macaw, flamingo, blue jay, pheasant and myna.

The story is mine."

Here's another photo from the artist's tumblr page: 

Mahalo to Amy for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! And thanks to Mom for sending it our way!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

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.

Amy's Feathers from Hawai'i (updated)

We're tying up some loose ends from earlier this year, and figured we'd share this cool tattoo:

This piece, on the back of a woman named Amy's leg, came to us in March via e-mail from the island of Hawai'i. Amy was a student of my mother's at the University of Hawai'i, Hilo campus. Mom snapped this photo, with Amy's blessing, for Tattoosday.

We don't have any further detail on the tattoo, like the name of the artist, and the origin of the design. There are peacock feathers, and I'm guessing eagle feathers, but I can't identify the other plumage with certainty. Nonetheless, we thought it was worth sharing, and clearing out our "in" box.

Amy credits Delshay at K-Town Tattoo & Body Piercing in Kona, Hawai'i with this tattoo. She added:

"I came up with the concept. Delshay put it all together for me. It's my bouquet of feathers.

The feathers range from peacock, bustard, macaw, flamingo, blue jay, pheasant and myna.

The story is mine."

Here's another photo from the artist's tumblr page: 

Mahalo to Amy for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! And thanks to Mom for sending it our way!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

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.