Dorothy Parker's Elbow
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JOSEPH MILLAR spent twenty-five years working jobs from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Double-Take, and other journals. His first collection is Overtime (Eastern Washington University Press). He teaches at Mount Hood Community College and the Mountain Writers Center in Portland, Oregon.
SETH MNOOKIN is a reporter living in New York City. He has written for The New York Observer, Salon, Brill’s Content, Inside, Slate, and other sundry publications.
RICK MOODY is the author of the novels The Ice Storm and Purple America and most recently of Demonology, a collection of short stories.
ALEJANDRO MURGUÍA is the author of Southern Front, which received the 1991 American Book Award. In 2002, City Lights Books published a new collection, This War Called Love. The Medicine of Memory: A Mexican Clan in California, nonfiction, is being published by the University of Texas Press. He teaches at San Francisco State University, College of Ethnic Studies.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925–1964) authored the novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. Her many acclaimed short stories are collected in the books A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge.
DZVINIA ORLOWSKY is a founding editor of Four Way Books, a contributing editor to Agni and the Marlboro Review, and teaches creative writing at Emerson College, Boston. Her second collection, Edge of House, was published in 1999 by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
SYLVIA PLATH (1932–1963), perhaps best known for her novel, The Bell Jar, and her poetry collections, The Colossus, Ariel, Crossing the Water, and Winter Trees, also authored a book of short stories, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.
SUS’I RICHARDSON is a New Hampshire–based writer. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and The Lyric, among other places.
KIRSTEN RYBCZYNSKI lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is a full-time bookseller. She coproduces Queer Girls Write, a local reading series, and runs workshops for writers of memoir and fiction. Her piece in this anthology is from her memoir-in-progress, The Poem My Father Wrote Called Fish.
MAUREEN SEATON’S new collection is Little Ice Age (Invisible Cities Press, 2001). She is the author of Furious Cooking (Iowa, 1996), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Lambda Award. With Denise Duhamel, she coauthored Exquisite Politics (Tia Chucha Press, 1997) and Oyl (Pearl Editions, 2000).
PAUL STEINBERG (1926–2000) was deported to Auschwitz at the age of sixteen. The excerpt in this anthology is from his recently published memoir, Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning. He appeared as Henri in Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.
DARCEY STEINKE is the author of Up Through Water, Suicide Blonde, and Jesus Saves. Her new novel is Milk. She teaches at the New School in New York City.
VIRGINIA CHASE SUTTON’S poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Western Humanities Review, and many other literary publications. She has been the Louis Untermeyer Scholar in Poetry at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was a winner of the Paumanock Poetry Award. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.
SUSAN TERRIS’S book, Curved Space, was published in 1998 by La Jolla Poets Press. In 1999 she published Eye of the Holocaust (Aretos Press) and Angels of Bataan (Pudding House Publications). Her journal publications include the Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Nimrod, and The Missouri Review.
PETER TRACHTENBERG’S stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, Chicago, and other literary magazines. Author of the books 7 Tattoos and The Casanova Complex, he works as a performance artist and lives in New York City.
STEVE VENDER is a private investigator who lives in San Francisco. He specializes in disorganized crime and criminal defense.
WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN is a journalist and author of numerous works of fiction, including, most recently, Argall, third in a projected seven-novel series about the European conquest of North America, and The Royal Family.
MICHAEL WATERS teaches at Salisbury University in Maryland. His recent books include Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions, 2001) and, with the late A. Poulin, Jr., the seventh edition of Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
KATHARINE WHITCOMB is the winner of the 2000 Bluestem Poetry Award for her collection, Saints of South Dakota and Other Poems. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and The Paris Review, and have been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
JOY WILLIAMS has written several novels and story collections, including The Quick and the Dead and Taking Care. Her new book is a collection of essays, Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals.
ELIOT WILSON recently completed his Ph.D. in American drama at the University of Alabama. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Many Mountains Moving, Willow Springs, and Beloit Poetry Journal.
CHERISE WYNEKEN is retired from teaching and raising four children. She lives with her husband of fifty years in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her book of poetry is Seeded Puffs, from Dry Bones Press, Inc.
Permissions
Kathy Acker: Excerpt from Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker, copyright © 1988 by Kathy Acker. Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
J. Acosta: Excerpt from The Tattoo Hunter by J. Acosta, Gato Negro Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Kim Addonizio: “First Poem for You” from The Philosopher’s Club by Kim Addonizio, copyright © 1994 by Kim Addonizio. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions.
Bruce Bond: “Second Skin” appeared as “Tattoos” in The Anteroom of Paradise, QRL, copyright © 1991 by Bruce Bond. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Ray Bradbury: Prologue from The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, Doubleday, copyright © 1951, renewed 1979 by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
Madame Chinchilla: “Herstory” from Stewed, Screwed and Tattooed by Madame Chinchilla, copyright © 1997 by Madame Chinchilla. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Mark Doty: “My Tattoo” from Sweet Machine, HarperCollins, copyright © 1998 by Mark Doty. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. “To the Engraver of My Skin” from Source, HarperCollins copyright © 2001 by Mark Doty. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Karol Griffin: “Zowie” first appeared in Northern Lights. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Thom Gunn: “Blackie, The Electric Rembrandt” from Collected Poems, copyright © 1994 by Thom Gunn. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Bob Hicok: “Becoming Bird” first appeared in Quarterly West. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Brenda Hillman: “The Y” from Cascadla, Wesleyan University Press, copyright © 2001 by Brenda Hillman. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Tony Hoagland: “The News” originally appeared in American Poetry Review. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Franz Kafka: “In the Penal Colony” from The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, copyright © 1948 by Schocken Books. Copyright renewed 1975 by Schocken Books. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
J. D. McClatchy: “Tattoos” first appeared in The Paris Review. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Elizabeth McCracken: “It’s Bad Luck to Die” from Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, HarperPerennial, copyright © 1997 by Elizabeth McCracken. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins.
Deena Metzger: Excerpt from Tree: Essays and Pieces by Deena Metzger, copyright © 1997 by Deena Metzger. Reprinted by permission of North Atlantic Books.
Seth Mnookin: “It Only Hurts a Little” first appeared in The Harvard Crimson, September 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Alejandro Murguía: “A Toda Máquina” from This War Called Love, City Lights Books, copyright © 2001 by Alejandro Murguía. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Flannery O’C
onnor: “Parker’s Back” from The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor, copyright © 1971 by the Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Dzvinia Orlowsky: “Tattoo Thoughts” first appeared in American Poetry Review. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Sylvia Plath: “The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle” from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts, HarperCollins. Copyright © 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963 by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1977, 1979 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. First appeared in Story, November 1959.
Paul Steinberg: Excerpt from “The Life and Death of Philippe” from Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning by Paul Steinberg, copyright © 1996 by Editions Ramsay, English language translation copyright © 2000 by Metropolitan Books. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Virginia Chase Sutton: “Embellishments” first appeared in Poet Lore. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Peter Trachtenberg: Excerpt from 7 Tattoos by Peter Trachtenberg, copyright © 1997 by Peter Trachtenberg. Reprinted by permission of Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.
William T. Vollmann: Excerpt from “The White Knights” from The Rainbow Stories, copyright © 1989 by William T. Vollmann. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Michael Waters: “Lace” from Bountiful, Carnegie Mellon University Press, copyright © 1992 by Michael Waters. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Katharine Whitcomb: “Benediction” from Saints of South Dakota and Other Poems by Katharine Whitcomb, copyright © 2000 by Katharine Whitcomb. Reprinted by permission of Bluestem Press.
Eliot Wilson: “Designing a Bird from Memory in Jack’s Skin Kitchen” first appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal. Reprinted by permission of the author.
INK ON INK
Once the province of sailors and bikers, tattoos have emerged from backdoor parlors to suburban shopping malls. Today they adorn starlets’ ankles, housewives’ shoulders, and bankers’ biceps. Fashionable? Most definitely. Respectable? Not always. Evocative, transformative, still dangerous? Just ask many of our most gifted writers across several colorful decades, who have found the images of the tattoo needle a vivid subject for the language of the pen. Brought to you by two editors who are themselves widely praised (and proudly tattooed) authors, these stories, poems, and memoirs span the range of human experience, from the awesome to the absurd. From Flannery O’Connor’s likeness of God to Sylvia Plath’s fifteen-dollar eagle, from Herman Melville’s power of the primitive to Mark Doty’s embrace of the ineradicable to Franz Kafka’s lasting mark of the penal colony, this bold exploration of the illuminated body is guaranteed to get under your skin.
DOROTHY PARKER’S ELBOW
KIM ADDONIZIO (right) is the author of five books, including Tell Me, a National Book Award Finalist. CHERYL DUMESNIL (lift) is a poet and performer who teaches privately in the San Francisco Bay Area.