Deb and I hatched a plan this summer: get the tattoos we’ve always wanted on the same day — one of us in Oregon and one of us in New York — and, as a bonus, use it as a writing prompt.

We spent some time emailing each other links to symbols and designs we liked. Deb lucked out and found exactly what she wanted pretty quickly. She took the bull by the horns and started meeting with artists, and she managed to find an opening right away. I told her not to wait for me: to go for it. I had decided on a dragon but planned to design my own, and I knew it would take me a while. And bless her, she held off on making the big blog reveal until managed to get mine done — which I just did!

The photos are (L to R): the tattoo’s position on my back, a close-up and my original sketch.

I worked on the sketch late August and early September, and then I did nothing. I kept intending to get myself to the tattoo shop on Lark Street in Albany, but I always had an excuse to put it off or something always came up. Then on Monday night, Jill wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t able to join me for dinner and an open mic. So instead of going out with Jill to dinner, I took my sketch to the tattoo shop — which is a block from the tavern that hosts the open mic. (So if I ever need someone to blame for this tattoo, besides Deb, of course, I can blame Jill.)

On Tuesday afternoon, I worked with the artist, who, because we were using different art terms, ended up translating my sketch into many different styles (Asian, cartoon, gargoyle, etc.). His drawings were beautiful but not quite right. Even though we kept going off in the wrong direction, it was great to see how skilled an artist he is. The transformations were incredible.

Eventually, we figured out that I wanted exactly what I had drawn — that he only had to tidy it up. When I went in Wednesday (yesterday) for the big gig, he showed me the perfect rendition. He says it’s (sort of) in the style of tribal tattoos — black ink only, solid color blocks instead of shading. He was so great to work with (shout out to Pete at Lark Tattoo!), and I am soooooo happy with the result. It was a wonderful experience.

It means something to me to have my own artwork on my skin, and it was a great collaboration with Pete to smooth it out and make it appropriate for a tattoo design. Even better, there’s something terrific that happened: the sketch I’d done had eight flowers between the wings, which meant nothing and I’d given no thought to it, but in Pete’s design (and the final tattoo) there are seven flowers, which has huge significance for me.

And I’m pleased that there was a full moon on the big day, which was also unplanned, but which makes me happy.

I’m hoping to do some creative writing (poems) about the tattoo shop and getting the tattoo. I’m hoping to write about the tattoo itself and imagine I’ll give her a name at some point. I’ll also write about the symbolism that solidified “dragon” as the subject for the artwork. It’s along these lines: free, fearless, protective, intelligent, benevolent, occasionally ill-tempered, timeless, etc.

I’m so glad to finally have my tattoo. Did you know I’d be at parties, and people would talk about who they bet had tattoos, and they’d always say, “Carolee”? And they’d always be wrong. And they couldn’t believe it and they’d want me to prove it. (I promise I never stripped, though.) (Not for this reason.) Well, now, when bets are placed that I’m the sort of girl with a tattoo, they’ll be winners. Thanks to Deb for egging me on.

P.S. Everyone’s question: Did it hurt? Yes. It hurt. But it was very tolerable. Pete worked steadily for something like an hour and 20 minutes, I think. None of the tattooing itself hurt as much as the first application of lotion after I cleaned it. (Well, after Dave cleaned it. I can’t quite reach it well enough to do a good job. You know, for a doctor, he’s kind of squeamish.) But wow! Lotion = stiiiiinnnnnng!

P.P.S. Sophie’s (Jill’s daughter’s) question: Did you cry? No. I didn’t cry. I breathed and I focused on the reggae music that was playing. Steel drums on the upbeats. Sometimes, I would count the beats and tap my toe within my shoe to distract myself.

P.P.P.S. As of this writing, I still haven’t told my dad. Eeeek!

Cover art by Jennifer Delaney

    
I’m very pleased to have a new poem, ‘Augusta Fabergé’, included in the fourth issue of ouroboros review alongside wonderful work by fellow bloggers: Sophie Mayer, Annie Clarkson, Matt Merritt, Arlene Ang and Deb Scott, among many others.
  
Collin Kelley conducts an absorbing and candid interview with Cecilia Woloch, author of Sacrifice, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, Late, Narcissus and Carpathia (BOA Editions, 2009), while Louisa Adjoa Parker asks important questions about black and minority ethnic publishing in the United Kingdom.
  
This issue also contains arresting visual art by Jennifer Delaney, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Julie E. Bloemeke, Deb Scott and Jéanpaul Ferro.
  
Read it here.

Another postcard for the August Poetry Postcard Festival. The last one! Destination: Deb in Portland, Oregon. (Yay!)

It has taken a bit longer than I thought it would to settle into my vacation — the Tin House Summer Writers Conference.

I am excellent at leaving the real world behind, even in little bits throughout my regular days at home, and so I’d expect that I would have clicked immediately with that wonderful fantasy place from whence the poetry comes. But what’s funny about a writing conference is that it’s not a fantasy place. It’s a real place with real people. I am sleeping in a dorm, sharing a bathroom (with two women who, at most, grunt and nod at me) and eating in a cafeteria. So I have to get my bearings about me before I can zip off into a creative space. I need to have a grasp on where I’ll be landing when I come back down.

I’m a bit of an outsider here because I’m not in a manuscript workshop. “Who’s class are you in?” is the first question people ask, and once it’s been sorted out who belongs with whom those are the established social circles for the week. I’m perfectly OK with being an outsider here. I have traveled this far for many reasons, and one of them is to get lost a bit. Sometimes that means it’s jarring when people (strangers) talk to you.

I don’t want to tell people my life story (a serious work-in-progress) or my writing story (barely serious compared to many here). In short, I don’t really want to be known. Not very social of me, I know. Sure, I’ve chatted with people; but mostly I’m keeping to myself. I have a terrific meal and cocktail hour buddy. Would you be surprised that I have gravitated to the youngest person here? She’s 21 and still an undergrad (isn’t it fabulous that she’s here?). She’s pierced and tattooed and she has a platinum blond mohawk. Ahhhh! Someone I can relate to.

Since I’m not workshopping, my schedule here is very light. Sometimes a lecture in the morning (sometimes not). Lectures in the afternoon. Readings in the evening. In between, they serve wonderful meals and beverages. I have time to run and walk and sleep. I have no excuse for not having written up notes/observations from the readings I attended at Skidmore last week. I have no excuse for not telling you about the lectures and readings I’ve attended here. Except it’s a working vacation for me. Emphasis on the “vacation.” And I’m enjoying the slow pace. The “me-time” pace. The do whatever-the-hell-I-want-to pace.

Meeting blogging pals was on my Portland to-do list. I met Dale on Sunday: lunch and a ride to Reed College, where the conference is. He is every bit as delightful as you may imagine. A true gift. I am meeting Deb this afternoon: a lecture and dinner and, perhaps, drinks. Perhaps.

So far, this is the exact writing vacation I wanted/needed. I made the decision to come in December. Almost immediately, I made the decision not to workshop a manuscript. There was too much stress in my life, too many pressures. And now, while some of that has eased, I’m still glad I’m not workshopping. I’ve seen some devastated and really pissed-off people emerging from the mornings it was their “turn.” I’m sure people have had fabulous experiences, as well.

I probably could have learned a lot from the process, but it has occurred to me in watching everyone talk so much about writing and publishing that I care very little about the opinions of strangers. You pay a lot of money for the workshop side of things — to get feedback from people about whom you know nothing. Now, the workshop leaders are well-known writers, and their insights are undoubtedly valuable. Still, the workshop with a professional writer is but one path. It’s not my path, though. At least not right now. I will find another way.

P.S. Jill! I miss you, man!

And I’ll be on vacation! It is my “if I have to be a hockey mom, I’m going to a writers conference” trip. I scheduled it long ago — in January — in the middle of pee wee hockey season, in the midst of my mom’s illness. I needed to get away more than anything. I still do.

Summer’s not the best time of year for me. I think that puts me in the minority. It’s not just that the boys are home from school and driving me bananas (but they are home from school and driving me bananas). I struggle with moods June, July and August, it seems. And I hate the heat. So it’s a good time for me to get away.

I’m going to Portland, Oregon, for a week and attending the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. I’m not going all-out and participating in the manuscript workshops. I don’t want to work that hard. I’ll be attending panels and lectures, but otherwise, I’ll be on vacation. Reading. Writing (excellent timing, too, coming off a spring heavy with manuscript editing). Exploring. Running. I like to run in new places. One of the highlights will be that I’ll get to meet my good pals Deb (stoneymoss) and Dale (mole). Deb may even have a drink with me.

Of course, now is the time for all the pre-travel, pre-conference, pre-IRL meeting nerves. I’ve never been to the West Coast. My longest plane ride before this has been Albany to Orlando, which is less than three hours. The cross-country leg of the flights for this trip are something like seven hours. (Can I sit on a plane that long? I get antsy at the 2-hour mark. What’ll I be like in hour 6?)

And what about staying on-campus with all those writers? Presumably, they’ll be nice enough, but what if they realize I’m not one of them? An imposter? And what about meeting friends you’ve only known online? I don’t think I translate well from the internet to real-life. The red hair and the bold-ish writing voice give people an impression of confidence I don’t necessarily have. (Jill assures me I come across in real-life better than I think, but she’s a very generous soul.)

So, there are lots of nerves and much anticipation, but it’s going to be a wonderful trip! I just have to survive next week with the boys home with me all day (why do they call it “quality time”?) and the week after that getting them started at summer camp. Yay!

Pipe dreams, they’re called, leading to nowhere,
steps off a parapet, a leap into the chasm,
that trill in the chest
that pause before one silent lift.
Rushing temples burn a heart,
rush of a city, wind against skin,
a place you had forgotten until now.

Pressed against invisible threads the clouds hiss,
don’t go too high. Scents of pine and laurel rise
from humus beds, sending soft, beguiling
messages of comfort —
an urge to burrow competes
with a cirrus-streaked bowl of sky.
Moisture glistens against panes,
scratching branches etch gaunt wraiths of the past.
They coax you down from the stratosphere
to ring the sentries, shatter glass,
wrestle slights, travel
into a channel riddled with crevices,
a game of blind man’s bluff into depths
charted or unknown.

A contest that wills you to expose roots
lost under melted glaciers,
entwined in the hulls of shipwrecks
where liquid dreams turn on a dime.

Relish worlds deep and salty, blur the line
between breathing underwater and taking flight.

by Deb Scott and Christine Swint

Process Notes

We started this work with a desire to create and collaborate together, but no clear idea of where and how exactly to start. Our intent was always to have fun, and to not worry about the finished project. As long as we were poeming and creating, we didn’t care (too much) what the finished product looked and sounded like. Deb was interested in learning about the video pieces Christine had been doing and that seemed a good jumping-off point. Christine edited some film clips she had and Deb free-wrote for five minutes in response to the images, not knowing what Christine had in mind.

Deb took the free-write, developed a first line and Christine followed. Alternate lines created a 16-line poem, of approximately 16 beats per line, initially broken into 2 stanzas.

Christine took the first revision (with Deb’s heartfelt gratitude) and broke the lines, reshaping the poem into what is presented today. A few minor word changes were made here and there but the language of the poem is nearly identical to where it started from.

We both agreed that one part of the video didn’t fit the poem and so it was cut (with a promise from Christine that it will reappear some time in the future as part of a different work). Deb sent Christine a link to her Flickr page with a number of sky images that Christine could work in if they fit. Then the hardest part (as far as Deb was concerned): did the read poem match the length of the video? Deb recorded the poem in 2 parts and Christine mixed the recording, the images and added background music. (Deb is going to learn how to do this too, she swears.)

Christine and Deb communicated via email and Google documents. They’ve never spoken or met (and both look forward to doing so some time. Maybe AWP 2010).

Watch the completed video here. –Eds.

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This series follows the eventful lives of some high-school kids in Tree Hill, a small but not too quiet town in North Carolina…

 
 
The second issue of poetry and art journal, ouroboros review, is now online and includes an interview with me and a few poems. 
 
Here’s a brief extract from the interview:
   
“It’s hard to say how living in South Africa has influenced my writing.  I find it difficult to think of ”influences”; so many things combine to create voice and writing style.  If anything, I’d say direct influences have been contemporary Northern hemisphere poets:  American, Canadian and English.  In my early twenties, I fell in love with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton’s work, and I adored Erica Jong’s chutzpah.
  
I admire the poetry of Louise Glück, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Pascale Petit, Vicki Feaver, Mary Oliver, Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, Mark Doty, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Derek Walcott, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, William Carlos Williams, Billy Collins and many more.  There are some wonderful South African poets:  Isobel Dixon, Rustum Kozain, Kelwyn Sole, Karen Press, Finuala Dowling, Joan Metelerkamp, Fiona Zerbst and Gabeba Baderoon, among others.“
  
Issue two also contains Collin Kelley’s interview with Vanessa Daou, poetry by Iain Britton, Allan Peterson, Rebecca Gethin, Robin Reagler, Julie Buffaloe-Yoder, Paul Stevens, Dustin Brookshire, Carolee Sherwood, Deb Scott, Jill Crammond Wickham - and that’s just the beginning.  The eye-catching cover art of the full moon over Atlanta is the work of talented photographer, Meg Pearlstein.
 
Indefatigable editors, Jo Hemmant and Christine Swint, have once again done a sterling job.  The journal is beautifully laid out and produced. 
 
Read it here.

“If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant,” Mr. Palomar thinks, “and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen.”
—from “Learning to be Dead”, in Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino.

“They got it wrong, this time.” She sighs and looks for tell-tale furrows, leaving the thought undone. That happens more and more. Each day her urges mature, exponentially. She ponders Derrida’s philosophy, dreams of peach gelato and recalls the fading blue of glacier ice. All the while her skin smoothes, blemishes fade, wrinkles flatten against tightening skin.

Now she moves quickly from tiny room to room. Passes over paths carved between chairs and boxes of canned vegetables to cluttered countertop, to closed window. Tasks pile undone, stale bread wrappers litter the bed, faint soap scum rings the sink. Books lay open in every room of the apartment. At deep window sills grit-dams form on the outer ledge. Swirling piles reconstitute themselves every dull orange morning.

Once a day, before the dust storms gather, she visits the small balcony cantilevered off her main room. A folding chair is wedged between desiccated tomato plants and the clean surface shaped to her bottom will be erased before she goes to sleep tonight. The metal chair is askew, startled by her rough movements when she jumps at the sound of frantic knocks barely heard through the closed glass door.

He puts a cigarette in his mouth and tumbles a plastic lighter through his fingers as if it were a coin in a child’s magic trick. They both know he won’t light the tobacco — this is just for show. It’s impatience, as if he couldn’t be bothered with this moment, one he is swatting at like a bothersome fly. He’ll soon leave, before the chill of the room can penetrate bodies at rest.

Plucking the cigarette from his lips, he spits out words stiffly, “They’ve come for Jamie. I thought you would want to know.” She picks at a frayed place mat and flicks a seed husk to the floor. No, she thinks. The cigarette is a statement of inherited wealth. He holds it like it wasn’t the last one he’d ever own. As if the paper was still white, as if it was still a perfect cylinder, fragile and solid. As if the spittle-stained wrapper was fresh and there were 19 more to be had any time he wanted.

The lighter is empty, and has been for months. She glances at him, past her long bangs, to fingers fondling a milky white edge, ragged and dirty where the lighter’s end was smashed by someone against brick. Precious liquid used to start a rubbish fire. The clear blue plastic is as much a relic as glacial crevasses; it’s as inconsequential as bergschrunds reduced to ashy heaps.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replies. She stays still, doesn’t reveal that she caught the flicker of surprise he brushed away after her response. He is studied nonchalance. Her hair is a veil that’s been growing, faster and faster. Scissors and a toothbrush rest together at a dusty bathroom sink. For a time the change was imperceptible. She didn’t notice the gradual increase until she had to trim her bangs every few weeks. Now she cuts both morning and night.

She can no longer find rubber bands large enough to bind up her brown hair in camouflage. A twisted ponytail won’t do. She plaits it, impatient for time lost to grooming; she could be reading. She wouldn’t bother at all, except she has become a curiosity and she doesn’t want rumors. At one time she could have donated all that long dark hair to wig-makers who specialized in chemo-kids and women. But there are no children, and the one shop still in business would be suspicious if she came once a month to donate, when there was a time it had taken her years to grow hair long enough they’d harvest it. It’s a shame. All that hair, wasted. If she weren’t so distracted she’d learn to spin yarn from her hair. She’d make ropes, or jackets. Perhaps nets.

But libraries are bare. There are no reference manuals for what she needs to know. The homesteading books were the first to go with their promises of lost-art knowledge: How to survive. And what she hadn’t been able to steal from the book-burner’s pyre became fuel. Momentary warmth and light, a way to sanitize water, make thin grey tea.

This visit is in the early evening, twilight in dusk, so she pushes her fringe aside to look at him straight on. “It doesn’t matter,” repeating her conviction when he swears under his breath, “Why do I bother? I have better things to do than to walk all the way over here.”

“No. You don’t.” His eyes widen the thickness of a lash. He’s polished his fuck-off attitude until his face is an immobile stone facade. But even stone crumbles, especially from her vantage — a receding figure in the foreground; illogical but undeniable. Her body will grow younger and younger as the weeks and days go by. Her body will return to preconception while her intellect expands until it will know no bounds, until it knows too much. And she will disappear. She’ll stretch between expanding and receding states. A human experiment shaped like a rubber band. One day. Pop. She won’t be in this apartment.

“It doesn’t matter?” he snaps. And hisses, “Oh, it does. It does.” He squints and then opens his eyes wide, pretending to yawn. She knows. He doesn’t want her to see rare moisture forming the sliver of a tear.

by Deb Scott

Download the MP3

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Glittering glass and ragged cans
Tumble and dive in a ravine
Talking to me in metered
Morse code of orange desert eye.
I seek signs.

Downwind grayed coyote
Skips straight ahead, scroungy
Mane awry in a matted mess.
My dad would have said
That critter is poor
When broke meant lean.

He’s seen better days —
When the cottontails
And voles leapt in his mouth
In the moon’s light and dew
Swam a river’s vista, ran further
Downstream and was glad.

These four wheels and static
Slash through mean creosote —
All I want is shade.
Relief from shimmering heat —
It shape-changes my hope
And pools green under the car.

Purple ranges simmer ahead.
I expect smoked pipe
And exhaust to catch up and swirl
Like a dust devil before a squeal
Of gravel arcs and sputters.
Your words hot and coarse

Untrue and mean with
None of the grandeur of that
Joshua tree but all the pride
Of a scorpion. Arched back
Showing how manly you are
You pierce my skin.

Solace in silent skies
Blue as your eyes and the ache
In my parched heart sighing —
Breezing past a shot-up stop sign —
Erodes clear signs of respite lost
With that last sip of sweet tea.

by Deb Scott

Download the MP3

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Northwest Arizona, c. 1965

I

Father .. says pick ‘em off
when you see ‘em crush ‘em
under this big flat stained
rock or a shoe .. the spreading
mess haunted long before
Kafka’s moth found me

before this grown girl
admired the sweet scent
tomatoes hot in a backyard
desert sun .. Bright grass-green
mythic beast as long as my palm

lumbers among vines rising
a foot above my crown .. One
horn five yellow spots too many
legs cling tight under shady leaves
he hides and grazes at night

II

Steady, a scientist or a child follows hatching eggs
caterpillar larva bury selves as sarcophagus
pupa before their dusky flutters find petunias.
Who else understands a winged monster inhabits
all cells? Did my dry-land farming granddaddy
relish last light grace or did spots signal only harm?
We sacrifice a few succulent globes for magic.

III

I caught a humming bird
hovering over twilight
at Mother’s honeysuckle
Now .. I know it wasn’t but
Manduca quinquemaculata
transformed unknowingly
Insect hawk sipping nectar

by Deb Scott

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