Best Women Tattoo Designs

Women's tattoo designs have grown enormously at a fast rate. Even just twenty years ago you were just starting to see women with tattoos, and most of these women kept them in discrete places so they could cover them up.

One of the very first women to sport tattoos was Betty Broadbent in 1927. She became known as the first tattooed lady; displaying her body art with Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. Not only was Betty the first to have a full body tattoo, but she was also the first to have her self tattooed by the electric tattoo machine.

Now in 2010, you can pretty much find a tattoo parlor in every city, as well as women sporting some pretty great tattoo designs all over the world.

Tattoos in general are now available in more colors and with pretty much any kind of design you like. If you are going to an exceptional tattoo artist, they can pretty much duplicate anything you like.

Women's tattoo designs over the years have pretty much evolved from simple 'names' and 'roses' to outrageous designs like 'flowers down the back', 'the tramp stamps' and 'angel wings'.

Also, women are no longer getting tattoos that they keep hidden.

Star Tattoo Designs

The star tattoo is one of the most popular tattoo designs that people look for. There are a couple of reasons for this. One of them is the fact that the star design looks great on almost anyone. One of the reasons is that it is a great first tattoo, in most cases it is small and quick to have done. Meaning a less painful tattoo for someone new to them. This is not always the case as there are some very intricate star tattoo designs.

How many points do you want the star to have? You may want to have a 4 or 5 pointed start or even one with 7 or 8 points, this is primarily a personal preference depending on what you feel would look best.

Do you want it to be a solid color or multiple colors? This also plays into the look and feel of the tattoo and also helps it stand out. You can have your tattoo with a solid color, like black, or you can have a few colors to give your tattoo more vibrant.

What is the right size for the star tattoo design? You will want to pick a size that will look best on the area that you want your tattoo to go.

Back Tattoos For Men

There are not many different ways to search around for back tattoos for men. When it comes to doing this online, you basically have search engines, which leads everybody to the most generic laced websites, which post nothing but cookie cutter junk. That's the exact reason I want to share this next little tip, because you can easily pin point the galleries that have fresh, original, well drawn back tattoos for men.

If you are like me and countless others, you truly do want to find a design that fits "you". The problem is that people aren't finding that type of original artwork, and instead bump into these horrible galleries that post the most cookie cutter images. You get stuck in a loop of generic back tattoos for men. This holds especially true, when you are looking for websites through a search engine.

While this is the end of the road for most men and women, it doesn't have to be that way for you. You have a much better option, because there's an easier way to get directly to the great websites that take pride in posting crisp, well drawn back tattoos for men. You find these places by using forums to your advantage. Big forums to be exact. To put it bluntly this is your choice for inside knowledge and info on so many separate tattoo related issues.

The best part is that you only need one main part of the forum. You need their archive sections. Any big forum you find will do the job just as good. Inside of these archives are loads and loads of past topics on tattoo subjects. All you have to do to find great galleries of back tattoos for men is start skimming through some topics. So much info is kept here, including posts where other guys have share where they've found truly great artwork for their own tattoo. It's this kind of hidden gallery that tends to feature the best, most original artwork.

It's a small change to how most of you are used to looking for back tattoos for men, but it's the one way that finally works.

Here are the 3 largest, most original websites to pick from thousands of quality Back Tattoos for Men.

Great Tattoos Designs For Men

With the countless kinds of tattoos designs for men that are available, it is truly unbelievably hard to pick out one that's perfect for you. You would have to screen the tattoos designs for men that you think you want to be put on your skin and then sort out the feelings that you get when you see yourself wearing the certain design. Not to mention the pressure that the word permanency puts on you when it comes to tattoos. It's not like you can just change it overnight or have it erased a week after.

So it is really very important for you to select a design wisely. You can do this by basing your judgment on a couple of important things. I have listed them down so you can check if the particular tattoos designs for men that you have selected is your final choice.

Here are 3 effective ways to know if the tattoo design is really the perfect design for you:

Select between having words or an image tattoo design.

Monkey Tattoos - Great Personality For Great Tattoo Designs

This is what monkeys are popular for. But, let's not forget that wit is also one of the monkey's well known traits. So, what better tattoo designs to reflect your personality than that of monkey tattoos?

Mostly the designs used for monkey tattoos are the many folkloric tales that monkeys starred in. One example of the monkey character from these great tales is from the Indian art called Hanuman the Monkey, which is an incarnation of Shiva - a Hindu god. Bravery, loyalty and devotion are among the distinct qualities of Shiva, the symbol of man and beast. A sample idea for a tattoo design is the monkey god chasing a flying sun.

Chinese monkey tattoos is yet another popular design depicting the animal as a god. There are actually several depictions for these Chinese monkeys reflecting different stories. Monkey designs may feature designs of woodblock-type image, or a simple kanji script reflecting the animal's 9th zodiac sign of the Chinese.

During the ancient times in Japan, monkeys were considered as messengers of the gods and symbolize harmonious marriage, fertility and safe child birth.

Monkey tattoos mostly illustrate the animal from their cute and charming images to caricatures.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Cody Todd

We are extending the Tattooed Poets Project through the weekend, giving those who have been enjoying the poetic ink, a little bit more to tide them over until next year.

Today we are being visited by an old friend, Cody Todd, whose tattoos appeared here last year.

This is his latest tattoo, four weeks old, inked at Purple Panther Tattoos off of Sunset in Los Angeles:


Cody provided this explanation:

Not too much of a story behind this. It is Marv and Goldie from the "The Hard Goodbye" of Frank Miller's Sin City. The artist who did this is from Tokyo, and her name is Koko Ainai. I admire the precision of her work in copying Miller's extremely elaborate sketching. As Marv and Goldie embrace, he is holding a gun he apparently took away from her and a bullet hole is smoldering in his right shoulder as he lifts her off the ground. That tattoo is the first of what is going to be a kind of sleeve in parts in which I take different scenes from noir films or works and decorate my whole left arm with. Upon seeing Farewell My Lovely with my girlfriend last week, I decided to get the front end of a 1934 or 1936 Buick as my next tattoo.

...I am doing my critical work for my PhD at USC on the "western noir," which is a term I sort of coined for a specific genre of film and literature concerned with elements that typically comprise classical film noir, except they take place in cities in the western part of the United States. As we see in the film, Sin City, it has a "Gothic City" feel to it, but it is most certainly somewhere out in western Nevada, or California. I think the motifs of lawlessness, street and vigilante justice, and the disillusionment with the American Dream are all at work in this kind of genre, and that it also borrows many elements from the Western as a genre as well. If anyone wants to read good literary western noir, I would direct them, promptly, to read Daniel Woodrell, who takes the noir theme and brings it to the Ozarks and southwest Missouri. If Chandler and Faulkner had a love-child, it most certainly would be Woodrell.

Head over to BillyBlog and read one of Cody's poems here.

Cody Todd is the author of the chapbook, To Frankenstein, My Father (2007, Proem Press). His poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain, Salt Hill and are forthcoming in Lake Effect, The Pinch, Specs Journal and Denver Quarterly. He received an MFA from Western Michigan University and is currently a Virginia Middleton Fellow in the PhD program in English-Literature/Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. He is the Managing Editor and co-creator of the poetry journal, The Offending Adam (www.theoffendingadam.com).

Rose Tattoos

Roses originated in ancient Persia and were historically viewed as a masculine flower, however several thousand years of cultivation produced many exquisite and beautiful variations associating it with females and love.

Greeks mythology described roses as being white until the goddess Aphrodite pricked herself on the thorns, and her blood drops turned the blossoms red. Even today people attach meaning and emotional qualities to roses.


Rose tattoo

Rose tattoo

Rose tattoo

Rose tattoo

Rose tattoo

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine tattoos run the gamut from small flowers to large designs, and this feminine tattoos gallery shows the range. If you're trying to decide on your own feminine tat design, use these images to jumpstart your creativity, but be sure to add your own personal touch.

Female tattoos – or tattoos that are feminine in design, and are usually favored by women or girls – are becoming more and more common.

For the first fifty or sixty years after tattooing became commonplace and even mainstream in modern society, few women got tattoos – in fact, those that did were the exception and usually a touch eccentric or rebellious.

All that changed about twenty years ago when tattooing became more socially acceptable, largely due to the many celebrities who publicly sported tattoos. Some of these were women, and so the female tattoo became more common and acceptable. Nowadays most people find female tattoos sexy and attractive, they certainly aren't offensive anymore.

Tattoos for women

That having been said it’s still true that more men than women get tattoos and it’s even true that there is a little element of social rebellion inherent in a woman’s decision to get a tattoo, although this is less and less the case, tattoos are more like a fashion item these days.

However, female ink is no longer shocking, and we no longer jump to conclusions about a woman’s moral character based on whether or not she has a few tattoos!

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Feminine Tattoos

Full Back Tattoo Designs

Full Back Tattoo Designs
Full back tattoo
A Chinese style tattoo. This is a figure of Chinese mythology, traditionally regarded as a vanquisher of ghosts and evil beings.
Full back tattoo
This tattoo design is very cool. It got a wall sculpture inked on the back, which has dragons and taichi. This tattoo wins a gold award in a competition.
Full back tattoo
Full back tattoo designs is always impressive especially at the first glance. Starting from this post, there will be a series of full back tattoo designs.

Heart And Love Tattoos

The heart is the symbol used mostly to express love but there are variations of this theme as well... a heart with an arrow through it signifies being "lovestruck", a broken heart is "love lost", and a flaming heart can symbolize "passion".

Heart tattoos
Heart tattoos

Heart tattoos

Heart tattoos

Heart tattoos

tribal star tattoo girls

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tribal star tattoo girls

shoulder star tattoos for guys

shoulder star tattoos
shoulder star tattoos ideas for guys

samurai tattoo on back body

samurai tattoosamurai tattoo on back body

sunflower tattoo designs for girls

sunflower tattoo designs sunflower tattoo star designs for girls on upper shoulders

small sunflower tattoo girlssmall and cute sunflower tattoo for girls on chest

weed tattoos for girls lower back

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cute and small weed tattoos with green colours can make your body look unique, you can put weed tattoos designs on lower back or ribs to get pretty tattoos

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jozi Tatham

Today's tattoo (and remember folks, we're continuing through May 2!) belongs to Jozi Tatham, who was referred to us by the Milwaukee Poet Laureate, Brenda Cárdenas (thanks Brenda!).

Her tattoo is certainly amazing:


Jozi had this tattoo done by Steve Bossler, who owns Greenseed Studios in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She had met him originally at Papes Blue Ribbon Tattoo in Milwaukee. Steve splits his time between the two locations.

Jozi explains the inspiration behind this tattoo:

I have wanted this back tattoo for years now. Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book growing up. Because I have since become a writer, it's extremely important to me to remember the childhood imagination and creativity that we are all born with, but which we often "outgrow". I refuse to grow up and let my imagination slip away, and hopefully having the monsters of creativity tattooed on my body will keep that close to me.


Please check out one of Jozi's poems over on BillyBlog here.

Jozi Tatham is currently a poetry MFA student at George Mason University in Virginia. She hails from Milwaukee, WI where she received her BA and the place which serves as "the inspiration for most of my being thus far." She has been published in newspapers and small publications in the Milwaukee area for poetry and nonfiction.

Thanks to Jozi for sharing with us here at Tattoosday!

Ornamental Death

These two illustrations are by the Austrian Art Nouveau painter Carl Otto Czeschka (1878-1960) and belonged to the book "Die Nibelungen. Interpreted by Franz Keim" (Wien and Leipzig 1909)


Like in the artwork by Howard Pyle the turn to a subjective interpretation of history can be observed. Even much more Czeschka refrains from any naturalistic depictions. His illustrations are first and foremost decorative ornaments. Nevertheless are his arms and costumes much more historical than that on history paintings which pretended to be realistic. And above all he achieves a kind of neo-Romanesque style like that of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Really great art!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Phebe Szatmari

Well I am back in New York and posting this a little later in the day than normal. The good news for those of you enjoying the Tattooed Poets Project is that we will spill over until Sunday, May 2, before resuming our normal activities.

In the mean time, enjoy this amazing tattoo from Phebe Szatmari:

Phebe writes:

Driftwood, for me, symbolizes the worn, the weathered, the old, the beautiful—each piece takes on its own character. My wife and I have a large piece from Richardson Lake in Maine that resembles a leaping elk. Its movement and energy are striking.

I was also inspired by artist Deborah Butterfield who is known for her sculptures of horses (initially created from driftwood before being cast in bronze).

When I found tattoo artist Jason Tyler Grace, I knew that he had the artistic ability to render a realistic image that would also work with the contours of my body. I decided to get my tattoo in order to initiate a new dialog with myself—and because tattoos are hot.
Be sure to check out one of Phebe's poems here.

Phebe Szatmari was working full-time in an office in Manhattan when she learned there was a shortage of poets. She immediately dropped everything and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton.

In her spare time, Phebe freelance edits, teaches writing, volunteers at LIGALY (Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Center), serves as a judge for teen poetry slams, and practices parkour. Her poems will be published in the forthcoming Writing Outside the Lines 2010 anthology.

Thanks to Phebe for sharing her lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Steele Campbell

Today's tattoo comes to us from Steele Campbell:



Steele tells us how he came to choose this tattoo:


"I debated back and forth about exactly what tattoo to get and where, but this one seemed to come from within. It should.



This is the Campbell Coat of Arms with the Campbell Motto underneath with Claymore swords behind the shield, as it was the Campbell Clan that started the Black Watch. What can I say; we are known for being ruthless. And because the
Campbell blood courses through these veins, and even spills from them on occasion, I could not find a better representation of myself. It was done in Auburn, Alabama at Shenanigan’s Tattoo Parlour by Ember Reign, a hard-yet-sweet roller-derby-girl tattoo-artist (among other things) as a celebration of permanence. But as nothing gold can stay, only this tattoo and my blood have remained. As they will."

Check out one of Steele's poems here on BillyBlog.

Steele Campbell is currently living (and I mean that robustly). He is essentially transient, but has paused his peregrination at Auburn University to complete a Master’s Degree on the fiction of Marilynne Robinson. He is the recipient of the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets two years running and has been published in Decompression, The Boston Literary Review, Rope and Wire and Touchstones. He is the student poetry editor of the Southern Humanities Review. You can visit him at www.steelecampbell.net.

tattoo tips and tricks5

Tattoo Tips and Tricks 5

Did you know of factors that impede the easier removal of tattoo? The removal of tattoo is not at all easy and possible in one session. Its complete removal, however, is difficult because of some factors. The age of tattoo is one of the factors. If a person has acquired the tattoo for almost three to five decades, the tendency to remove the colors or ink of the tattoo becomes a big challenge. The size of the tattoo and inks types and colors are also few of the factors that make the removal of tattoo a bit hard. A dermatologist can help resolve your worries about your tattoo and how it can be better removed. Your dermatologist can prescribe anesthesia if s/he found out that you need it. In addition, the dermatologist can inform you if all of your tattoos have the possibility to be removed. The process of removing the tattoo does not take an overnight process; rather the whole process reaches for about several months. The removal experience of tattoo is almost likened to getting a new tattoo because of almost similar pains. The removed tattoo become a wound part and must be scrupulously looked after and not be scrubbed or rubbed. Tattoo is supposedly designed for permanence but if you may still have it remove when you decide it only that the whole removal procedure is worse than the first time you had your body tattoo.

Daniel Les is a Tattoo Expert who specialize in designing exclusive body tattoo designs and market them

The Tattooed Poets Project: Lisa Gill

Today's tattoo comes to us courtesy of Lisa Gill:


Lisa tells us:

"Last September, I got a rattlesnake in my living room. (I live rural outside the small town Moriarty, NM). I spent over two hours in close proximity to the snake, and ultimately ended up calling the sheriff's department and getting a deputy to help me catch it and release it off my property. After the encounter I spent months and months writing direct address poems to the snake and ended up with a play where the snake speaks back. The Relenting is both "true story" and archetypal and imagined journey, paralleling the transformation the snake sparked. The encounter, and the writing where I tried to process the encounter, changed my life, and because my life had changed (and is still changing), I wanted a tattoo to symbolize the transformation.

The only tattoo image I considered was the Minoan Snake Goddess.

I understood her intuitively in a way I'm still working to express with words. I worked with tattoo artist Serena Lander. I knew Serena's work on visual artist Suzanne Sbarge, who regularly helps bring Serena to New Mexico from Seattle. I trusted Suzanne and was right to. I had a great experience with Serena, the right kind of energy and contemplative exchange. I wanted line work, one color, kind of ruddy toned. She took images I sent her from archeological digs at the Palace of Knossos and transformed them into the image now on my arm.

I consider the image both a prayer and a mark of a turning point in my life. (I have three earlier tattoos, two black, one white, all smaller, from a decade prior, sparked by a different significant recognition.) The subtext for the new one is this: right before the encounter with the rattler, I'd just made it out of a wheelchair I'd been in for five months due to multiple sclerosis. Arms are not something I take for granted any longer... and the tattoo in that respect is simply about gratitude and facing disability with resilience, as much as I can muster..."


Please venture on over to BillyBlog to read an excerpt from the aforementioned The Relenting here.

New Mexico poet Lisa Gill is the recipient of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, a 2010 New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award, and just earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico this April. She is a literary arts activist, currently booking poets for "Church of Beethoven," and the author of three books of poetry, Red as a Lotus, Mortar & Pestle, and Dark Enough. A fourth book, The Relenting, is forthcoming with New Rivers Press (June 2010) and can be considered either a play or a poem scripted for two voices, rattler and woman. She'll be touring the play in the upcoming year, starting with a staged reading with Tricklock's Kevin Elder at 516 Arts in Albuquerque in June and then onward to Minnesota, LA, hopefully even to NY.

Thanks to Lisa for sharing her amazing tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Blue & Red Anchor as a Necklace Tattoo


A fun design with a chain across the chest holding a blue and red anchor.

Girl with Side of Neck Heart & Anchor Tattoo


A red heart with a ship's anchor on top of it. A simple and nice tattoo on this girl, just a bit below her neck.

Old School Traditional Anchor Tattoo


Anchor and rope design. Nice bold shading for this popular theme of Old School tattoos.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jeff Simpson

Today's tattooed poet found us by way of Adam Deutsch. Jeff Simpson offers up this cool arm tattoo:


Jeff, a tattooed poet from Oklahoma tells us:

I started reading Horace in grad school and soon grew to be a fan of the odes. The quote, pulvis et umbra sumus—taken from the ode to Torquatus—is commonly translated as, “We are dust and shadows,” but I prefer David Ferry’s version: “we’re nothing but dust, we’re nothing but shadows.” The line offers such a blunt beauty to our mortality, I thought it would serve as a good defense against procrastination, etc. The tattoo was done by David Bruehl at Think Ink Tattoos in Norman, OK. David is an incredible artist. I basically gave him the quote, said I dig skulls, and he nailed the design on the first sketch. This was my first tattoo (I was a late bloomer), and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I’ve already booked another session to start working on a sleeve.
Head over to BillyBlog and read one of Jeff's poems here.

Born and raised in southwest Oklahoma, Jeff Simpson received his MFA from Oklahoma State University in 2009. He is the founder and managing editor of The Fiddleback, an online arts & literature journal that will launch its first issue later this year. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Copper Nickel, Harpur Palate, The Pinch, and H_NGM_N. His first full-length collection, Vertical Hold, will be published by Steel Toe Books in 2011.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Cheryl Dumesnil

Today's tattooed poet is Cheryl Dumesnil.

She offers up this lovely sand dollar tattoo:


Cheryl informs us that Amy Justen from Sacred Rose Tattoo in Berkeley did the work, three sand dollars on her lower left leg:

"Before my first son, Brennan, was born, I had three miscarriages. After his birth, I packed those losses away in a box marked “then,” and moved forward into parenthood. Or so I thought. Nearly a year after my second son, Kian, was born, old grief began seeping out of that box, coloring my days. While exploring how those miscarriages were still affecting me, as a way of integrating them
into my life rather than denying their impact on me, I had three sand dollars tattooed on my leg."

What folows is an excerpt from Love Song for Baby X, a memoir about Cheryl's circuitous route to parenthood, that tells the sand dollar story:


There is also a poem of Cheryl's over on BillyBlog here.

* * *



Sitting in meditation, I close my eyes and invite grief to appear. Now that I’m safely ensconced in parenthood, I can do this. Now that I know what I’m grieving: not the loss of parenthood, but the loss of three babies, I can do this. There, I said it: babies.



I breathe in. I see a meadow full of ragweed and green foxtails. I breathe out.



I wait.



Will grief enter as a mountain lion, all creep, shadow, and snarl? Will grief enter as a black-tailed deer, timidly nibbling the undergrowth?



I breathe in. I breathe out. I wait.



From the center of the field, something white and winged flickers up out of the grasses, flies like a lazy spring butterfly across the blue sky and lands on my left leg. It presses an image into my flesh then dissolves.



What I see there: three sand dollars sketched on my skin.



“Really?” I ask.



“Yes,” grief confirms, “really.”



“Okay.”



* * *



“I know what my next tattoo will be.” I present this fact to my wife Tracie as she is standing in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.



She spits a mouthful of foam into the sink, “Yeah, the cherry blossoms and humming bird, right?”



“Well yeah,” I say, “that one too, but first I need to get a different tattoo.” I touch the outside of my lower left leg, “three sand dollars, for the three babies we lost.”



Tracie looks at me, blinking, toothbrush held in midair.



When I speak it out loud, the tattoo plan seems weird, a bit extreme. I mean, were they really babies? Were they really important enough to warrant a permanent mark on my body? I say, “I’m gonna sit with it for a few days, to make sure the image sticks. But it arrived in such an authentic way, I feel like I need to do this.”



She’s not a fan of tattoos, my wife. And yet she knows tattoo is a primal means of self-expression for me. This conflict of interests—wanting to offer me her unconditional support, not wanting her wife to look like a circus freak—it hangs in the air. Until we burst out laughing.



A memorial tattoo. A monument to three spirits that passed through this body. A tribute to all I’ve learned through their passing.



* * *



A week before my appointment at Sacred Rose Tattoo, I walk Pajaro Dunes, the beach of my childhood, looking for whole sand dollars. I want to bring samples to the tattoo studio, to present my artist, Amy, with examples of the real thing.



I want her to feel their grit between her finger tips, to trace the gray veins that creep up their sides like fissures in concrete, to see how the five-pointed star is made up of hundreds of needle-thin lines, to break one open and release the three, tiny, porcelain-like doves that rattle around inside.



I know this length of beach like no other. I know where the waves cross over each other, creating pockets in the sand that catch sand dollars, a cache revealed at low tide.



This weekend, for the first time in my life, I can’t find a single whole sand dollar. This weekend, I carry home a small Tupperware bowl filled with bone-white fragments.



* * *



The electric buzz of Amy’s tattoo gun, the burn of ink needled between my epidermal layers, sends endorphins pulsing through me. Lying on her table, I float in and out of the room, memory playing its filmstrip in my brain.



Years ago, while walking along San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, troubling through a life-altering break-up, I recalled something my sister had found on the beach when we were kids: a dime-sized sand dollar. Logic questioned the accuracy of that memory: could that really have happened? I looked out at the Pacific: five tiers of gray and churning pre-storm waves. How could something so fragile have made it from there to here? Not possible. Then I looked down at the sand. There it was, not five inches away from my feet: another dime-sized sand dollar on the beach.



Now and then, Amy’s voice swirls into my dream-state: “How are you doing?”



“Mmm. Fine,” I hum.



And then the dream about my grandma returns—she and I standing in the shallow surf at Pajaro Dunes, sunlight glaring so brightly off the water, I couldn’t look directly at it. Reaching blindly into the sea, again and again, I grabbed up fistfuls of broken sand dollars, wanting the whole ones I couldn’t see. “Keep trying,” she said, “They’re in there. Just keep trying.”



As Amy works, etching the hair-fine, single-needle lines into my skin, I learn what the sand dollars are really about: hope and faith, trying and believing.


~~~~~~~~~~


Winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of In Praise of Falling, editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall, and co-editor, with Kim Addonizio, of Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Indiana Review, Calyx, and Many Mountains Moving, among other literary magazines. Her essays have appeared on literarymama.com, hipmama.com, mamazine.com and in Hip Mama Zine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their two sons. Visit her at http://www.cheryldumesnil.com/.

Marble Body

Death of Cleopatra (1874) by the French Orientalist painter Jean-Andre Rixens.

Like many of his colleagues Rixens shows here the dead Cleopatra bitten by an asp as it was told by Shakespeare and frequently interpreted by painters. Though there is not much new concerning the subject, it is interesting how Rixens painted the dead Queen. The body is so pale and perfect that it resembles much more a statue of marble than something of flesh and blood. Despite the theatrical gestures it’s pure art, already anticipating the upcoming Art Nouveau.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Gina Myers

Today's tattoo comes to us courtesy of Gina Myers, who is the third poet this month to come back to the Tattooed Poets Project after appearing last year. Check out her 2009 contribution here.

Gina sent along this tattoo, which graces the inside of her left wrist:


Gina explains that this tattoo:
"... was done by PJ at Old Town Tattoo in Saginaw, Michigan. In addition to the word bird, I have several other birds tattooed on my body: a pigeon named Franklin, a phoenix, an eagle, and a number of swallows. "Ginabird" is one of my nicknames, and "bird" is a nickname I share with my best friend. I always thought it was weird when people got either their own names or their own nicknames tattooed on themselves, but this seemed okay since it was a shared nickname. It's not really about me. My best friend said she is getting the same tattoo in the same place, but that hasn't happened yet."
Be sure to head over to BillyBlog and read one of Gina's poems that she picked for us here at The Tattooed Poets Project.

Gina Myers lives in Saginaw, MI, where she works as the Associate Editor of 360 Main Street, the Book Review Editor of NewPages, and the Reviews Editor of H_NGM_N. Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Model Year, was published by Coconut Books in 2009.
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