Shortly before trial, when Mando was walking the mainline one day, somebody fucked up and let a Sureño out at the same time. Just as the man passed, Mando grabbed him by the hair and pulled him backward. In a second, Mando cut the man’s throat from ear to ear with a jail blade fashioned from pilfered safety razors. As the man fell, clutching at his neck and desperately gasping for air, Mando stood over him, arms aloft, laughing maniacally.
Miraculously, the man survived. A week later I saw the photos taken by the Sheriff’s Department as part of the Discovery package provided by the DA’s office. It was Mando’s new case.
Mando comes out of Ad Seg, cuffed and chained, into the interview room, and we look at the photos together. When we’re finished, I go straight to the bar across the street from the jail and drink steadily for two hours, continuing to look at the photographs. I can’t stop looking at that cut, the jagged red gully that was carved into the man’s throat. It looks like an aerial photo of a clear-cut forest, an obscene violence blighting the landscape. I try counting the stitches, but I’m either too drunk or there are too many and I lose count.
When I get home that night, I begin thinking about all of the bangers who look at themselves as soldiers in a war. Then I think about all of the books I’ve read on gangs and poverty, disintegrating families, overcrowding and alienation. But what keeps coming back to me is the look in Mando’s eyes when I showed him the photographs. I’d been looking at Mando’s tattoos all during the time I worked on his case, and they certainly told me things about him, but now I understood that Mando never needed those tattoos. He had his eyes. That look was all he needed to wear, a look that took you to the bottom of the ocean, a place so cold and so dark that only the most hideous creatures could survive there. The silence in that look had me spooked far more than any of the sounds that ever came from his tattoos.
The News
TONY HOAGLAND
The big country beat the little country up
like a schoolyard bully,
so an even bigger country stepped in
and knocked it on its ass to make it nice,
which reminds me of my Uncle Bob’s
philosophy of parenting.
It’s August, I’m sitting on the porch swing,
touching the sores inside my mouth
with the tip of my tongue, watching the sun
go down in the west like a sinking ship,
from which a flood of stick orange bleeds out.
It’s the hour of meatloaf perfume emanating from the
houses.
It’s the season of Little League practice
and atonal high school band rehearsals.
You can’t buy a beach umbrella in the stores till next year.
The summer beauty pageants are all over,
and no one I know won the swimsuit competition.
This year illness just flirted with me,
picking me up and putting me down
like a cat with a ball of yarn,
so I walked among the living like a tourist,
and I wore my health uneasily, like a borrowed shirt,
knowing I would probably have to give it back.
There are the terrible things that happen to you
and the terrible things that you yourself make happen,
like Frank, who gave his favorite niece
a little red sports car
for her to smash her life to pieces in.
And the girl on the radio sings,
You know what I’m talking about. Bawhoop, awhoop.
This year it seems like everyone is getting tattoos—
Great White sharks and Chinese characters,
hummingbirds and musical notes—
but the only tattoo I would want to get
is of a fist and a rose.
But I can’t tell how they will fit together on my shoulder.
If the rose is inside the fist, it will be crushed or hidden;
if the fist is closed, as a fist by definition is,
it cannot reach out to touch the rose.
Yet the only tattoo I want this year
is of a fist and rose, together.
Fist, that helps you survive.
Rose, without which
you have no reason to live.
The Y
BRENDA HILLMAN
They are bringing back the bones of Che Guevara
so the system of universal capitalism
will be reversed while a girl on the stairmaster
reads Anna Karenina, pausing at the part
where Vronsky, thinking Anna into the wrong coldness,
might turn his back on her another time. The girl
would name her dog for him if she had one. Legs with
many tattoos of heavenly bodies (ceiling
stars, moons, snakes) push weights; it all shakes, and
east of here,
aspen forests growing from root systems that never
die send out shoots above ground anyway because
the lust to be individual exceeds the
desire to lie down anonymously above
a mantle of fire. No one’s arguing about
formal necessity or the power below
survival or if they wanted to be touched, there.
from “The Life and Death of Philippe”
PAUL STEINBERG
The next day was devoted to learning various rituals and, above all, the salutes. We were taught the Mützen auf, Mützen ab, the basic exercise that served as a common denominator in all the camps.
In the presence of an SS soldier you had to stand at attention and doff your cap, Mützen ab, slapping it against your thigh; it was the same for roll call. The command equivalent of “At ease!” was Mützen auf “Caps on.” If an SS man spoke to you, or even looked at you, you had to salute and recite your identification, that is, the number that would be assigned to you and tattooed on your left arm, the number that from then on would be your official identity.
The tattooing took place the following day, in fact, at the hands of the approved expert. We lined up for the last time in alphabetical order. Our series began with 156,900 and something. Philippe was baptized 157,090 and I became 157,239. It was all done with the same needle, a succession of rather deep shots, painful but bearable. (I’ve never experienced unbearable pain. Unless it was last year—and morphine managed to take care of it.) Just my bad luck, my family name started with S, which came right after the Rs. And someone who had a last name beginning with that letter had a hepatitis virus. I was infected along with thirty or forty others who had no antibodies. The epidemic broke out after a few weeks’ incubation, and I’m probably the only one who survived it.
True Tattoo
MAUREEN SEATON
Poet Gregg Shapiro wrote a tattoo poem in which his father had numbers carved on his forearm. The poem is wonderful, although a lie, and I always teach it to my beginning students so they know it’s okay to lie in a poem. I bring Shapiro in as a guest. He’s funny and lovable, and the students eventually forgive him for lying about his father’s arm.
When my mother died, a refrain began in my head that I didn’t recognize for days: “She isn’t merely dead, she’s really and sincerely dead” I was appalled at first to find this callous Munchkin melody repeating in my brain. Shapiro tells my class that his tattoo poem, although technically a lie, was written with love for his father and the Jewish people. When I tell him that the truth about my grief is that sometimes I find myself singing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead,” he supports me because he is good at holding more than one truth at a time.
This is how I came to get my first tattoo. My friend Cobalt had been practicing tattooing on citrus fruit for weeks, so I shaved my leg just above the knee and held my breath as she dug in. I’ve described the pain as being splattered with hot grease every second for three hours. My mom’s death took sixteen months. Believe me when I say that getting a tattoo reminds me a little of death, t
he surrender of skin, the grind of teeth, bones humming, soul chasing light.
“I do not have a tattoo…”
SUSI RICHARDSON
I do not have a tattoo. My brother Mark, however, did. He cannot tell you about his tattoo because one cold February day, just shy of his thirtieth birthday, Mark jumped from the 59th Street Bridge in New York City. In a city of millions, no one saw him fall, but someone did find his body in the East River sludge. At the morgue, another someone handled the waterlogged body, read the tattoo stamped on Mark’s chest: encircled in red, with a diagonal slash to say no, the four black letters, E-X-I-T.
Wings, Fish, Star
LAURA A. GOLDSTEIN
1.
I walked over the dark bridge
and into a city I
did not know.
I pointed to the shadow
on the wall and was
given my black wings.
2.
He drew the fish
and placed it
under my breast
and worked for three hours
until I passed out
and then worked for another hour.
He told me the story of the koi
and the dragon and the pearl
and left it in three colors
on my body.
3.
When I returned
from the South
I got a green star.
Green because it is
a Mardi Gras color.
Behind my ankle
because I wanted
it to make me fly—
so that when I run
I’ll lift off from
the ordinary ground.
And mostly I do.
Benediction
KATHARINE WHITCOMB
Goldfish, spewed from the sewer, gills starved
for oxygen, write hieroglyphs in the muddy creek bottom
with their tails, write the Lord bless us
and keep us, make his face to shine upon us, write in praise
of time and their golden skin. In the world above, a sparrow
sings
his old story under the winter eaves, sings oh be gracious
unto us and give us peace. Bless my friend who leans
across the restaurant table and says sometimes we don’t know
when we’re suffering. But it’s there in the lines on our palms:
the world is a dangerous place, landscapes drift toward us
threatening burial or exposure, we skid over the freeway, the
snow
spelling messages, twenty-five below, having courage, lift up
your hearts… In the labor camps of Perm, Sakhalin,
Yekaterinburg,
convicts tattoo themselves, each other, with a secret
alphabet, pricking with dye made from burnt rubber and urine.
Three dots on a woman’s hand means thief. An eight-
pointed star
on a kneecap says I bow to no one. The eyes of a housefly
ink the cheeks of the rapist. The book of skin reads: we lift
them up
unto the Lord, what is left to lift. And now
I sit with my hands full of stones, warming them, feeling the
story
of crushing, slamming water, the great blue continents
ground
together and apart. Blood warm stones sing a million praises
to our terrible short flame, all we get and never enough,
the veins in the rock singing world without end, amen.
Contributors
J. ACOSTA is a poet and fiction writer who lives in San Francisco. He is the author of The Tattoo Hunter (Gato Negro Books), The Reader of Borges, and Violent Velvet.
KIM ADDONIZIO is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Tell Me, which was a National Book Award Finalist. Her other books are In the Box Called Pleasure (FC2), a book of stories; and (with Dorianne Laux) The Poet’s Cornpanion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton).
ROBERT C. ALLEN is twenty-two years old and has been incarcerated for the past five and a half years. All of his tattoos have been done in prison.
JENNIFER ARMSTRONG is a musical storyteller and devotes her time to giving performances, workshops, and residencies in singing, storytelling, and writing across the country. She makes her home in Belfast, Maine.
LESLEE BECKER grew up in the Adirondacks, where tattoo artistry was exhibited at the Champlain Valley Fair, along with other sideshow attractions. She has published a story collection, The Sincere Café, and has had stories in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
BRUCE BOND’S collections of poetry include Independence Days (R. Gross Award), The Anteroom of Paradise (Colladay Award), Radiography (Ornish Award, BOA Editions), and The Throats of Narcissus (University of Arkansas Press).
RAY BRADBURY, one of the stellar science fiction writers of our time, is the author of numerous books, among them The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
MADAME CHINCHILLA of Triangle Tattoo and Museum is a tattoo artist of fifteen years. She is the author of three books: one poetry, one children’s, and Stewed, Screwed and Tattooed. She’s the curator of Triangle Tattoo History Museum and has appeared on the Discovery Channel’s documentary “Tattoo, Beauty, Art, and Pain.”
GARNETT KILBERG COHEN’S collection of short strories, Lost Women, Banished Souls, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1996. She’s published stories and poems in numerous literary journals. She received a Special Mention in Fiction from Pushcart Prize 2000 and was awarded a 2001 Illinois Individual Artist’s Award.
LARRY CRIST lives in Seattle, where he writes and acts. He is currently working on a novel. His poems have appeared in Slipstream, Poetry Motel, and many other Journals.
MARX DOTY’S sixth book of poems, Source, appeared from HarperCollins in 2001. He’s received NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Writers Award. He is a 2001/02 Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
DENISE DUHAMEL’S most recent title is Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including four editions of Best American Poetry. She is an assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami.
CHERYL DUMESIL’s poems have been published in several literary journals, including Calyx, Many Mountains Moving, and Bakunin. A former creative writing instructor at Santa Clara University, she currently teaches privately in the San Francisco Bay Area.
LAURA A. GOLDSTEIN is working toward a master’s degree in creative writing at Temple University as a poet. She teaches composition, writing, and yoga, and holds poetry workshops in Philadelphia.
KAROL GRIFFIN lives in Laramie, Wyoming, with her son, Sam. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, including Northern Lights, Fourth Genre, Red Rock Review, the Owen Wister Review, Dark Horse Literary Review, and Vista: New Perspectives on the West. “Zowie” earned the Wyoniing Arts Council 2000 Doubleday award.
THOM GUNN is the author of twelve books of poetry, including The Man with Night Sweats, Collected Poems, and most recently, Boss Cupid. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and other awards.
BOB HICOK’S books are The Legend of Light, Plus Shipping, and Animal Soul.
BRENDA HILLMAN is the author of five collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press. She teaches at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. She has two tattoos and plans for a third.
TONY HOAGLAND has published two books, Sweet Ruin (University of Wisconsin) and Donkey Gospel (Graywolf). He’s wOo fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and is completing a third collection of poems and a collection of essays.
FRANZ KAFKA (1883–
1924), an insurance man by trade, spent his evenings writing brilliant stories like “The Metamorphosis” and “In the Penal Colony,” and the unfinished novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.
FRANK MARTINEZ LESTER has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost fifteen years. His work appears in the anthology Looking Queer: Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities (edited by Dawn Atkins, 1998), and he received a 1997–98 grant from PEN Center West.
J. D. MCCLATCHY is a noted poet, critic, and editor whose works include Ten Commandments, White Paper, and The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. He is also editor of the Voice of the Poet audiotape series. Since 1991 he has served as editor of The Yale Review.
ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN is the author of the novels The Giant’s House, a National Book Award Finalist, and Niagara Falls All Over Again, as well as the story collection Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry.
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819–1891) authored the classic Moby Dick, as well as numerous other works of poetry and fiction.
LISSETTE MENDEZ’s poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals. She is a student in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University and is working on a memoir and a collection of poems. She got her first tattoo at eighteen and never looked back.
DEENA METZGER, a writer, healer, and counselor, is the author of several collections, including Tree: Essays and Pieces (North Atlantic Books) and Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds (HarperSF). She teaches writing in Los Angeles and at workshops around the Country.
Dorothy Parker's Elbow Page 22
