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“First Poem for You”



I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

Kim Addonizio

I remember the day like it was yesterday. Storming, muggy, the smell of wet pavement, the city washed clean by the rain. I was about to enter a tattoo parlor as a blank canvass, open to expression on my skin. The day would change me forever, I went into the studio pure youth, untainted by ink, and left a renewed woman. The hum of the tattoo gun frightened me. I was nervous, in a good way, something to take the pain away; my heart was heavy at the time. Transforming pain into pleasure. I was looking for some sort of relief, healing, and a change. Like when you dye your hair fire-engine red change, but more drastic. A friendly young woman sat me down to wait near a stand of magazines; on the stand was a journal, “Tattoo”, it read, in big bold letters. I sat back and took the book onto my lap. The journal was filled with stories on flesh, peoples living journals, their tattoos. It was beautiful. Kim Addonizio’s poem “First...