Stick-and-Poke
Kara Goughnour
In the dim, dorm light of the lounge,
Rachel burns the needle and lets it lick
the small pit of ink. We encircle her
and watch it like a holy thing,
a baptism of tin-colored pin.
She gives three freshmen best-friends
a matching wish for the next four years
in the soft split of their elbows,
then turns to the three of us, expectantly,
and of the four of us, two refuse, take refuge
in the temporary. But Rachel plunges the pin in
and twists up in a fish hook of smoked pigment
in pale hand, then moves on to our fourth friend.
I am thinking about her tending to the tattoo
like a tender sapling, with a tedious eye,
tongue pinched at the split of her lips.
I am thinking about the pain of the moment,
how I may be ready to start feeling it again.
How I should’ve got a stick-and-poke
that wouldn’t have hurt
a thing, how I could’ve let it live by the quick
of my tired nail bed, how I could’ve held it
in my work-tethered hands like a butterfly
landing in a construction site, a knowing
naivety among time-tethered bone.
Kara Goughnour is a queer writer and documentarian living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They received their Bachelor’s Degree in Creative and Professional Writing from The University of Pittsburgh. They are the author of "Mixed Tapes," forthcoming in the Ghost City Press Summer 2019 Micro-Chap Series. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Third Point Press, and over thirty-five others. Follow them on Twitter @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com.