After Tom Williams
Saturday now my sorrow lasts all day. I slam the door on my way out, angry at the no-one inside. I walk downtown, thinking I’ll get a bit of the hair of the dog that bit me but the dog is my skin and hunger tears at me, and I find myself wandering through a strange shop—full of drawings, inks, the smell of disinfectant.
I look at drawings of tattoos, looking for something wild enough for the tender skin of my inner arm. I show the artist a drawing, then the spot on my arm, and ask her for a tiger but, I say, with longer teeth, stronger tail, longer legs. Coil them, I say and think, into a terrifying potential of spring and pounce and howl.
I need to feel on my skin what’s under my skin when finally the feeling comes—ten-thousand tiny shooting burns meaner than stings, but smaller; impossibly invisible but for the ink. When it’s over,
I take a long breath, turn my arm out to see for the first time on my skin my sepia and orange; my longtime companion, and in that instant she springs at me with her full saber-toothed rage, vicious ball of hunger and claw, fierceness of sorrow and grief and what I feel is real. She rides her voice into the news, down to soft caterwauls and purrs and then we walk home.
—Jennifer Woodworth. Many thanks to Bop Dead City, where this poem first appeared.
YES!!!!!!! I’m buying! Link us up dude!
That’s Dr. Ma’am to you, pally! Ha!!! This is fun today! Once they thought it was age-ism they liked it. No really, I swear!