Keloid

Etched meat, I keep thinking

while Tom works this buzzing needle

around my leg.  I’m staring

at the “Eat The Rich” bumper sticker

on the wall, and his poster, “The Top Ten Things

You Never Want to Hear

at a Tattoo Parlor.”  “Eagle?

I thought you said Beagle,”

and “Don’t you hate it when you get the hiccups?”

We’re listening to Clapton and Tom’s telling me

about the cover-up job he’s just finished—

a girl with a fairy.  He was photographing her

as I came in, the small bare nipples of that fairy shining

in the cream on her back, grotesque and fascinating.

We’re above his barn, and his collection of flash

lines the walls.  While he works, a neighbor wanders in

and asks about that meat saw for the stubborn pig’s shoulder.

Above the kitchen sink, Tom mutters

and keeps filling skin.  He’s talking now

about his seven kids, how all they want

is that damn Gap clothing, and the parents at the PTA meetings

who will hate him when he tattoos their kids.

This art is heady, high-inducing—the tickling pain

almost comforting.

And when you grow old?  the PTA murmurs,

What then?  And there I am at the podium,

with a glass of water and sweaty palms

speaking, telling them

everything is permanent—

whether we mark it or not,

it marks us—

scars form when a wound heals.

These tattoos are directions, cave drawings,

a treasure map to the goods

in a language as ancient as pain.

One drunk night a U.S. Marine in a bar

told me in between sips

how the genuinely hard-core snipers

tattooed their vitals in their armpits

so they could be identified when their remains

were mutilated beyond all recognition.

He said, Are you strong enough

to stomach this?   I laughed

as he pulled up his shirt.

My grandmother, in the audience of the PTA,

gets up from her auditorium chair to remind me

that what I’m doing breaks Jewish law.

The blue numbers on her arm are faded, yet visible

even from where I stand, her tattoos adding

to six million rounded either way,

one daughter, one brother, a father,

a mother. She shouts,

What have you been through?  

and I cannot answer.