by L. Shapley Bassen

“…looking at tattoo biopsies under the microscope, scientists saw macrophages laden with ink globules, and the story of tattoos became one of the immune system."
-New York Times

It’s ancient, likely prehistoric,
your skin hieroglyphics,
as unwelcome in the human body
as baryonic matter in the universe
where we are altogether graffiti.
Was the Beginning then a Big Tattoo,
a signal bugle of sound, not light?
Matter becomes mind we don’t know how.
Nevertheless, the scrawl that appalls
macrophages who engulf, engorge,
but are eventually replaced themselves,
echoes your tattoo. I lack kinky ink
myself. I’m penned with scars.

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L. Shapley Bassen’s grandmother was a telegrapher on Wall Street a century ago who taught her to read and tapped messages to her in Morse Code on the wooden arm of a chair. She sees the world bi-focally through science and art. A New Yorker living in Rhode Island, she is a multi-published & prize-winning author of fiction, poetry, & drama. She is an editor at Craft Literary. See more at lsbassen.com.