{"id":901,"date":"2015-10-20T16:22:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T20:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/wp\/?p=901"},"modified":"2015-12-01T14:19:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T19:19:27","slug":"alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/2015\/10\/20\/alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Smith’s tattoos were done at Addiction NYC<\/a> by two different artists at different times. His Sun & Moon tattoo was done by Liz and his Hawk was done by Tom Solomon<\/a>. Alexander is a professional copyeditor <\/a>and a poet. His poetry has been published in Frequency Writers anthology,\u00a0 Missing Providence<\/a>, and can be found online on Get Well Soon Zine<\/a>. \u00a0ZO Magazine <\/a>\u00a0has accepted his graphic poem for the 2015\/2016 Poetry Expos\u00e9s, which goes live on 1\/2\/16. His book, For Poets Must Love: Poem Compilation,<\/a><\/em> is available on Amazon — go get it!<\/p>\n

Alexander had provided his own story of his tattoos:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve traveled 3,000 miles to get a needle stuck in my arm hundreds of times. More than once.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In that parlor with the derelict name behind the head shop, I met two artists \u2013 foreigners \u2013 who imprinted beautifully and precisely patterned ink onto my body.<\/p>\n

Liz, a British, expat. And Tom, a former Israeli soldier.<\/p>\n

I remember stepping past the glass pipes into the darkly lighted, leather-couch-lined walls of Addiction NYC. Behind the slanted counter, Liz slumped, writing on a paper scrap. She looked up and offered her introduction.<\/p>\n

I pointed out a water-fire, sun-moon design and my vision of a connected wheel-like shape. Head to toe. Day to night. The moon and sun would lie.<\/p>\n

My family sat on the red-leather sectional that midwinter afternoon. As I, anxious and impulsive, walked past the black, slanted counter and rolled up my sleeve. A new piece of me was born.<\/p>\n

Two years and several months later. With my Los Angeles music studies finished, I followed my writer\u2019s dream to Portland. Until another family visit brought me back to Manhattan. And with incredulity, I found myself walking past those glass pipes again.<\/p>\n

The bird that flew across my thoughts during my clouded and isolated Portland months had transformed from a scavenger crow to a majestic hunter. And it demanded its release from the cage of my mind. I followed Tom back behind the slanted counter. With a painstaking meticulousness, I previously had never encountered, he forever stenciled the hawk onto my right shoulder. And imbued it with blue-eyed sight.<\/p>\n

With the work complete, Tom turned me toward the mirror. Blood. Ink. A smile. The same smile that had appeared those few short years before when I turned to the same mirror with Liz at my other arm. A smile of relief \u2013 and pride \u2013which bared my teeth.<\/p>\n

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Alexander Smith’s tattoos were done at Addiction NYC by two different artists at different times. His Sun & Moon tattoo was done by Liz and his Hawk was done by Tom Solomon. Alexander is a professional copyeditor and a poet. His poetry has been published in Frequency Writers anthology,\u00a0 Missing Providence, and can be found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Alex_13_S1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6wDJO-ex","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tattoomacro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}