The Tattooed Poets Project: Kayla Sargeson

Often people winder where I find all of our tattooed poets. Many come to us via word-of-mouth and through social media. This year, I found an anthology of poets "under 25," and figured that would be a good resource. Today's post, along with a few others, originated from that volume.

Today's tattooed poet is Kayla Sargeson. She is sharing this whimsical tattoo, which is her ninth:



This is Kayla's tattoo of an alien head that proclaims “I like chicken.” The artist is Pete Larkin at Kyklops Tattoo in Pittsburgh, PA.

I'll let Kayla explain the rest:
For the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been pursuing my MFA in Chicago, a city I’ve grown to hate. I feel like I don’t fit this city, or maybe it just doesn’t fit me. Regardless, I feel like an alien here that had to leave her home planet. Thus the alien tattoo. I go back and forth between Chicago and Pittsburgh often and during one of these visits, my mentor Jan Beatty was dropping me off at Kyklops [Tattoo]. She said “why don’t you have your alien say ‘I like chicken.’” I thought this was the funniest thing in the world, so I said “okay.” I walked into the shop where Pete was working on the alien. He showed me the sketch and I said “It looks perfect, except can the alien say ‘I like chicken’?” “Absolutely” said Pete and we were both standing in his little work station, cracking up. Because I have so many tattoos, I quit going for ones that have some soft, sentimental back story. I love to laugh and I like to be amused. I wake up to my alien every day and every day he makes me laugh.
Kayla sends us this poem:

Hellwave

Eleven tattoos and can’t stop
want my body covered/
no space for that night at the fraternity house:
body cracked open like glass.
I want a needle in my skin.
I’m the queen wasp thick and pissed off.
My friends say girl you’re on the fringe/
father likes to get me drunk/show off:
This is my smart daughter. The pretty one’s at home.
I know the push of a hand on the back of the head/
faceful of cock/baby no teeth
do what I tell you/stepfather’s raised fist: bitch I’ll hit you.
At the Rock Room, for a tit grab
it’s all-you-can-drink-all-night.
I’ll suck you off for a joint.
I’m looking for my studded Sid Vicious cliché:
skinny punk with the bass guitar.
He’s got the chain wallet, leans
against his amp and almost looks alive.
He rides a Fat Boy/he’ll get me out of here.
We’ll ride the hellwave screaming.

~ ~ ~

Kayla Sargeson earned a BA in creative writing from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she was awarded the Award for Excellence in Creative Writing: Poetry. Her work has appeared in the national anthology, Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as Voices from the Attic Volume XIV, and Dionne’s Story. Her poems also appear, or are forthcoming in, 5 AM, Columbia Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Paper Street, Ophelia Street, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and phantom limb. She is attending the MFA program at Columbia College Chicago, where she is recipient of a Follet Fellowship and serves as an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review.

Thanks to Kayla for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Blog Archive