by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
“Coyote inks a tattoo so aware of the pain he cannot stop talking endless questioning from music to weather to artist to art everything but the needle spinning in his arm he does everything he can to ignore the procedure…”
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO as legend as map as path as coordinates through winds pushing back through labyrinth shadows across white bedroom walls descending again into nostalgic pull calling him back to haunted beliefs to jagged ruts to mud-memories to guilt to regret to sources unsure to the center of the maze to a smoking blur if only he could write it just one more time he could say it right he could break this rhyme as the needle bites into his pale arm he looks to wings to rise beyond —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO of mixed-message meanings of inner wisdom of transformational change of intuition of unnatural luck of crossing worlds between living and dead the figure most favored by the bruja crone a shape-shifting creature beneath a silent moon with yellow eyes almost human a swiveling head a mid-flight demon if you ever see one make the sign of the cross yet when he was a boy in his living room cot the broken stray his mother adopted to heal sat atop her perch as he drifted to sleep a feathered shadow he could barely see a night spirit presence ushering in dream —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO through the smoke of piñon through wings gliding silently through his childhood home to an aspen bark crescent split by lightning where the nightbird watches over his family through unflinching eyes a widowed mother rescuing her past an artist uncle inside him a priest an older brother fleeing their dead father’s spirit their whispering three sisters gathering closer to hear it an orphaned grandfather who once slept in a cave a restless grandmother whose rosary would save and the boy with the pencil chasing shifting shapes these hidden faces she revealed with her gaze —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO a lifetime too late to mark a passing he can never quite face on a cloudy day in August 1964 his father turned to his mother beside the hospital door through a mist of rain with a final cancer breath unable to explain the man he had been to the five young children he left behind each bequeathed an absence to define from a cardboard box in a hallway closet a tarnished ashtray a broken watch but with a split-toned pigment written on skin his negative space becomes a gift —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO so aware of the pain he cannot stop talking endless questioning from music to weather to artist to art everything but the needle spinning in his arm he does everything he can to ignore the procedure while the point he knows is embracing fear yet he looks away as he always has blind to blood perhaps it will pass this belief this illusion his one true faith until the piercing scratching hits him full in the face the depth of losses he hoped to avoid sink deeper with denial into an insatiable void when he finally turns he can finally see how a permanent wound can help him feel —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO of opposing elements of obsidian black against the eggshell of his skin his mother’s New Mexican soil his father’s Iowa escape of one foot where he stands of one finger where he blames more blurred than blended than he initially seems which is itself is the problem the identity underneath this inner conflict now drawn as a badge to complicate his appearance at the last minute he adds a middle hue from the color wheel a shade of mixed blood to make it real —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO from an image he stole like the shards like the wire like the stones he pulled with his mother from the llano in the name of rescuing a vanishing culture an erasing of land yet never did they consider this a violation because his mother is rooted in ancestral sand yet only now guised as the trickster-thief can he see the irony behind his misguided belief and now with the borrowed imprint of an indigenous design he wears the evidence embedded in skin —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO to mark a transition from gate to door to border to intersection from one shape to another one stage to the next in passing in crossing in turning on his path to walk through the mirror to emerge from his past his constant searching for a place he can rest with this ceremonial symbol etched upon his arm to guide him through an obsession to depart to return his animal mask to its origin place so can he walk this earth with one true face —
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COYOTE INKS A TATTOO that makes him smile when his eyes pass over the geometric design so precise the clarity so defined the line so perfect the balance he sought to find now manifest beneath his forearm sleeve for all to see its symmetry the wide-eyed owl with wings in flight its talons spread wide to grasp desire a painted scar at last revealing his own transcendence through perpetual reaching —
This might sound odd for an essayist and memoirist to admit, but I’ve never felt comfortable writing directly about myself. I came to nonfiction through journalism. The first-person “I” has never felt quite right. So I’ve had to find other ways into my work. “Painted Scar” is part of a hybrid collection exploring notions of self, ethnicity, culture, trespass, and personal reckoning through the shape-shifting persona of “Coyote,” New Mexican slang for “mixed” (or “mutt”), a label given to the narrator as an adolescent. The essays repurpose the derogatory elements of the slur into a mask through which the narrator views the liminal elements of his identity – real, perceived and imagined as well as past, present and future. Speculation, like the language, syntax and form, is akin to reaching for me here – reaching toward empathy, insight, resolution, and a sense of belonging that might never be realized. Like the essay form itself, it’s the speculative endeavor that interests me most - the attempt, not the destination, nor the grasping of a thing, but the seeking, which can become its own revelation.
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of Descanso for My Father , Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams, and Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between. His work has appeared widely in such venues as New Letters, TriQuarterly, Brevity and Puerto del Sol. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation as well as the Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize, Colorado Book Award and New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. He teaches at Colorado State University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.