The Tattooed Poets Project: Alicia Adams

Alicia Adams is today's tattooed poet. She contacted me back in February and told me she was moving out to Brooklyn from Southern California in March. So, last week we met in a large Union Square flagship bookstore and I snapped a photo of her stunning tattoo: <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr3hFxTqhAnBWRuU7rS4q9p2LCG122Nt1rxzo49qhT9WI54GMDJEuvAKexu4pUgTGjZi7MzEhWrDGSVBZvEL64AGxfRtKZaTnryKsiDiCqYRjU2QE3AFRlMhMNk8LSuiZTmWihPXKHv9U/s1600/alicia+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr3hFxTqhAnBWRuU7rS4q9p2LCG122Nt1rxzo49qhT9WI54GMDJEuvAKexu4pUgTGjZi7MzEhWrDGSVBZvEL64AGxfRtKZaTnryKsiDiCqYRjU2QE3AFRlMhMNk8LSuiZTmWihPXKHv9U/s400/alicia+1.jpg" width="388" /></a></div><br />I'll let Alicia explain the story behind this beautiful piece:<br /><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This tattoo was done by an artist named <a href="http://shaybredimus.com/">Shay Bredimus</a> at <a href="http://www.outerlimitstattoo.com/">Outer Limits Tattoo and Body Piercing</a> in </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Long Beach</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">California</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, the city where I was raised and educated.  I had always known I wanted a tattoo, but I could never settle on exactly what I wanted.  When I went in to Outer Limits, I still didn’t know.  I decided flowers were pretty and timeless and could mean whatever I wanted them to mean.  I decided on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peony">peony</a> because I had just seen my first one and fallen in love with it.  I didn’t know what peonies symbolized, and I didn’t want to know.  I decided I had a lifetime to figure out what it meant to me.  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was getting my MFA in fiction writing, and when I met Shay he told me he had his MFA in painting.  For hours we talked about art and literature and grad school and our lives.  It was the best tattooing experience I could have hoped for, and I fell in love with the finished product immediately.  As I was leaving he invited me to his gallery.  I went when he wasn’t there.  His pieces were huge, each one taking up the better part of a wall, and they were exquisite and done in black tattoo ink only.  I wrote him an email telling him how amazing I thought his art was, and he asked me to come back in for touch ups, and that’s when he added the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom">cherry blossoms</a>.  </span></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMz3Smz7MICVvf4M_urxFn6gxJDtGbn5gL2VXtL9Q9fLYOwfU5EuH1i6KB4Eqp3jtC6BjpHUMBqrqf8xDtxMyexsaWKb3okmKhN5UU0TygQA0C6vRzqzJSoPfQ4wNAhIC8hnlMvC-HD7o/s1600/alicia+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMz3Smz7MICVvf4M_urxFn6gxJDtGbn5gL2VXtL9Q9fLYOwfU5EuH1i6KB4Eqp3jtC6BjpHUMBqrqf8xDtxMyexsaWKb3okmKhN5UU0TygQA0C6vRzqzJSoPfQ4wNAhIC8hnlMvC-HD7o/s400/alicia+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I buy cherry blossom shampoo now and cherry blossom soap.  It’s a silly thing maybe, but it makes me feel pretty and reminds me that I am part of a work of art.</span></div></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>In addition to this tattoo, Alicia is sharing the following poem, "Red Room," <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">which was originally published in <a href="http://themastequilareview.wordpress.com/"><i>The Mas Tequila Review</i></a><i>:</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><i></i></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">Red Room</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">By Alicia Adams</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">You wish you had been born from your father’s head.  </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">Like Athena.  When you picture Athena in the womb </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">of Zeus’s skull, you picture her in a hollow red room </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">with no corners.  You picture her curled in a ball </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">and growing larger, fully clothed with battle gear, spear </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">stuck behind her father’s eye, a migraine pulsing.  When you </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">picture your own father’s head, you picture it crowded.  </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">But you could have curled around the deep-set grooves </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">of gray matter, your tiny hands pressed against his frontal</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">cortex and into his dreams.  And when you were ready, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">you could have stood on your shoed feet and pushed</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">up and hard with rhythmic contractions until your father,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">unable to take it any longer, found a way to open </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">himself and let you out.  You think about this often.  </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">In the back of your own mind, dark and polluted, you can feel </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">a tumor growing.  One that will ripen and mutate,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;">killing you slowly, and with little effort.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><i>~~~</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><i> </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Alicia Adams graduated from </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1947858922"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">California</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">State</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">University</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">:  </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Long Beach</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/english/mfa/">’s Fiction MFA program</a> in 2010.  She co-hosted <a href="http://proseandconsradio.blogspot.com/"><i>Prose and Cons Radio</i></a> and is the co-founder of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/After-the-Carnival-Literary-Events/137307442987969?ref=ts&sk=wall"><i>After the Carnival (Literary Events)</i></a>.  Her work has been published in several magazines and anthologies, including most recently <i><a href="http://www.kulone.com/US/Event/2049901-How-Dirty-Girls-Get-Clean-Reading">How Dirty Girls Get Clean</a> </i>and <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984619860/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bill03-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0984619860%22%3EBeside%20the%20City%20of%20Angels:%20An%20Anthology%20of%20Long%20Beach%20Poetry%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=&l=as2&o=1&a=0984619860%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E"><i>Beside the City of Angels</i></a>.   </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=bill03-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0984619860" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div><br />Thanks so much to Alicia for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.<br /><br />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 </span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://tattoosday.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://tattoosday.blogspot.com</a> 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.</span></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>

The Tattooed Poets Project: Alicia Adams

Alicia Adams is today's tattooed poet. She contacted me back in February and told me she was moving out to Brooklyn from Southern Califo...

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