handpoking
I’d love to tattoo you! Email me to discuss booking. My sliding-scale rates start at $50 & I’m open to trades. See my full archives (& available flash) here!

Excerpt from my essay, “Handpoker’s Confession” :

When I give tattoos by hand, I often think of childbirth.

(I say this as a childless person, but also as a doula and a practitioner of natality,
in the Hannah Arendtian tradition.)


A minor grief washes over me each time the handpoked person walks out my door,
separation anxiety for the fledgling we’ve made together.




Handpoking also feels like carving something out of marble,
or fishing for something older than both of us,

ancient, possibly always there,



and handpoking it into visibility is a process of coaxing its spirit up from the depths.


Dredging it, rather.
It can feel alternately like doing violence and like being remade again and again
from the life-giving sun of another human’s attention.

Like sex.

Like church, too.


In and out and the ink runneth over.
Maketh little tide pools of a person’s skin.

For a more complete archive of my tattoo work, including my available flash,
click here.