Tattoo Poetry: Ode on a Grecian Urn Prompt

Tattoo poetry is permanent poetry—captured by the body that bears it. There’s a sense in which it is locked in time and form, much the way the painted Greek lovers were perpetually locked to the vase in Ode on a Grecian Urn…

 

 

 

 

 

—John Keats

Poetry Prompt

Try your hand at writing an ode about a particular tattoo that is captured on someone’s body. Or, be the captured tattoo and tell us what it is like to be perpetually attached to the body you are attached to.

Thanks to our participants in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a recent Tattoo poem we enjoyed from Richard…

Eve’s Tattoo

Let the ink tell the real story,
not his dream of me—the assistant,
standing naked, the snake coiled
around my arm, the temptress
with the son who died
for pride and smoke.

Show my daughters how
we threshed the dry grain,
and baked the flat bread,
on the rocks of a sad history,
hidden behind splendor.

It’s not easy with gods
and men, nailing their edicts
to a tree, one way or another,
making their pronouncements,
from balconies and mountaintops.

Their gods expect compliance,
but we are the mavens
who haggle sheep for a life,
from our cloth and paper prisons,
to keep the promises true.

You can believe the old story,
if it helps you sleep,
but remember, I am in you
always, the cage bone,
the one closest to the heart.

—Richard Maxson

Photo by Bhumika.B, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

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Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!

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