by Jill Gewirtz
I Want to Punch Your Tattooist
though none of this is their fault,
this being my post-religious habit of reading
the bodies I love as indictments
against my eyes, this being my rage against
the apologies of my body,
this being the way I twist your form into a god
laughing at my want of a body.
I watch your tattooist’s eyes studying your arm,
hear the buzz of tiny blades
biting your wrist, & the parlor walls flicker
into cut limestone. I dim, skulk
into the shadows of your scriptorium,
as your monk’s quill pulls dark fire
across your planes. How your monk hums
over you, dipping their inks
into your skin with the ease of a priest
drawing a god with nothing
but a plate of crumbs & shoestring of words.
I want to punch your tattooist
like I’ve wanted to slug a priest,
to split the ceremony’s cold lip,
jump the railing, grab a wafer & dangle
god’s body over my mouth.
Your tattooist’s a priest, pimp, middleman
of hunger. They won’t lift you
to my lips or place you on my tongue. No,
that motherfucker lingers over you,
bruising your flesh into a gecko eating
its old self, the needle blooming
a bumpy, bulbous head, flick-tongued,
ravening, as I put my eyes
in slender cracks veining the russet walls,
& a sly cactus sunning on the sill.
My eyes are pretending you see, make-
believing this is an Indiana Jones movie:
You’re the dazzling ark and I don’t want you
to melt my face off for looking.
But this is a tattoo parlor not a church, movie,
or scriptorium & you’re not
a laser beam of divinity devastating my body
& I most definitely
am not burning.
Rebekah M. Devine (she/her) is a white, queer (aspec) writer residing in Reno, Nevada. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Rejection Letters, and Pussy Magic, among others. She holds an MLitt in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts, and an MA in Biblical Exegesis. She is an MFA student in Creative Writing at Mississippi University for Women.
Jill Gewirtz ( she/ hers) is a native New Yorker who has been creating art, be it music, photography, jewelry making, since childhood. Currently, she is doing photo construction, sculptural work with photographs, collages, transfers on mirrors and image transparency film transfers. Her image from the Museum of the City of New York’s show ‘Rising Waters, Hurricane Sandy’ was recently accepted into the permanent collection at the Museum of the City of New York. Her photos have appeared in museum group shows at Marin Museum, Marietta Cobb, Masur, Katonah, Monmouth, Attleboro, Griffin and Hockaday and Cica Museums of Art and Berlin Biennial with the Julia Cameron Awards. Jessica Porter curated a small group show including Gewirtz and 2 painters, Joyce Pommer and Elise Freda at the Yard in New York. Most recently her work has been in multiple shows at Con Artist Collective in the Lower East Side.