The Tattooed Poets Project: Sarah Certa

Today's tattooed poet is Sarah Certa.

Sarah's tattoo is simple, but powerful:

Photo by Sarah Certa

She even sent along a collage of the tattoo process:

Photos by Laura Martie

Why does a woman have a tattoo of the name "Johnny" on her arm? I'll let Sarah explain:

"My tattoo was done at Voodoo Tattoo in Big Lake, MN. It's on the inside of my left wrist, and it's my brother's name, Johnny, in my handwriting. He is two years younger than me and in the Army Infantry, currently deployed in southern Afghanistan. I got the tattoo this past fall, November 2012, about a month before he deployed, because I wanted to do something to show my support and admiration for him, and since I carry a strong needle phobia, this was a very big thing for me to do. It also serves as a reminder of strength, especially on hard days, to just keep going, the way he does..."

Sarah also sent us this poem, which is making its first appearance here:

The Wind

I’ve been eating way too much chocolate
these past few days, which really fucks up
my bikini-season diet, which is really
a ridiculous thing to waste time thinking about because regardless of my pant size
one day I’m going to die. This is not a newsflash
but every time I think about it, it’s as if I’m being beat
in the stomach with a baseball bat, and on it are the signatures
of everyone I’ve ever loved. It’s amazing
that I continue to recover from these assaults, that somehow
I get out of bed. I make coffee. Every day
I brush my teeth. I smooth Burt’s Bees chap-stick
on my lips, which are filled with blood, and how incredible
is that? How incredible, that I’m able to stand up
and put one foot in front of the other, shuffle forward
one small miracle at a time. How incredible, yet how
pathetic, as I sit here with my coffee and my diet, while nearly 2,000 miles away
my little brother is marching in the 5 AM rain with the rest
of his infantry platoon. He is already my hero,
the way he skydives into this life, so reckless yet good
to himself, raving about sushi like it’s his religion and sipping $90 whiskey
that’s almost as old as he is. You just keep going, he says. You’re not going to die
from running too much. I think about him
training for war this summer, hiking 25 miles
in the California desert with 60 pounds on his back, knowing
that soon he’ll be on foot in southern Afghanistan where he could
be blown to pieces at any minute, and already
each step he takes is an army-sized miracle, each breath the wind that pushes me
through another goddamn day.

~ ~ ~

Sarah Certa holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems appear in Country Music, The Bakery, B O D Y, and PANK, among other places. She is the Social Media Director for H_NGM_N, a contributing editor for Split Rock Review, and a freelance writer and photographer. Find her online at sarahcerta.tumblr.com.

Thanks to Sarah for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project! And a special thanks to her brother Johnny for his service to our country. We're wishing him our very best and pray for his safety while he is overseas.

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.

Laura Brooks Shares Her Parents Names and Her Toe Knuckles

I met Laura Brooks outside of Macy*s on 34th Street last month. She has a lot of tattoos (she estimates 60% of her canvas is covered), so I deferred to her, asking which she wanted to share with us here on Tattoosday.

She offered up her wrists:

These are her parents names, Davis and Blythe, and they were designed by a friend of hers whose graffiti moniker is "Gamble". She credited the actual tattooing to an artist named Joe from Beelistic's Blood Money Tattoo in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Laura Brooks also informed me that she had tattoos on her toes, but she was wearing shoes when I met her. Later that day, she held to her word and sent me a photo of her toe knuckle tattoos which read "Dirty South":

She added:

"The artist was Brent Hale at No Regrets Tattoo Emporium in Memphis, TN. It was actually his idea. I wanted to get toe knuckle tattoos & couldn't decide what I wanted it to say. He came up with it while we were working on a different piece ... The significance is kind of obvious. Hometown pride. (:

One thing about toe tattoos: by far the most painful spot. And you have to get them touched up about half a dozen times before they look right. I should probably go get them done one more time but I'm procrastinating because of the pain."

Thanks to Laura Brooks for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Noelle Kocot

We are launching this, our fourth year of celebrating tattooed poets for National Poetry Month, with the work of an amazingly talented writer, Noelle Kocot. I had first approached Noelle about participating last year, but it never came to fruition.This year, however, we were able to pull it together.

First, here's a glimpse of Noelle's tattoo:

As tattoos go, this is fairly simple and straight forward. It's the name "Damon," but it's not just any name.

Damon Tomblin  was Noelle's husband, who died on March 10, 2004. She had his name memorialized in December, later that year. This is her only tattoo.  I'd point you to this page from dewclaw journal to read a little more from Noelle about Damon, and hear a few movements from a sonata Damon composed.

Noelle offered us the following poem, which originally appeared in Tin House, and was later included in her book Sunny Wednesday:

12^th Wedding Anniversary

Jailed and decreased, my doughnuts rise.

 Have a feather, don’t ask why,

 There is a Coney Island in my eye.

 Hair and plaid rabbits,

 Anniversal belief is the strongest to go

 Over a listless sky, a prevenient frost.

 Let’s go to the Cloisters

 And all you can eat sushi

 My tattoo should be healed now.

 Dear, you are a norming legend in the kitty-star.

 I eat for two, on the evening of

 We knew each other before our faces and our names.

~ ~ ~

Noelle Kocot is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including most recently, The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011) and Sunny Wednesday ( Wave Books, 2009). She has also recently published a limited-edition collection of translations of the poems of Tristan Corbière, as Poet By Default ( Wave Books, 2011). Kocot has received numerous honors for her poetry, including a NEA fellowship and inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2001 and 2011.


Thanks to Noelle for her contribution, and helping us launch this, our fourth year of the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. Photos courtesy of Noelle Kocot. Poem reprinted with the author'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.