Summary

The poem begins with a description of the tattoo, a dagger held in a fist within a heart and its faded appearance on the shoulder of an older man. The tattoo is likened more to a bruise than an artistic expression, a marker of the vanity of youth that leads people to desire ways of distinguishing themselves from their peers. The harshness of the tattoo which calls to mind a young man who would have been “strong as a stallion, fast and ornery” is incongruous with the changes in his body as he has aged (8). Some of his vanity has lingered, as the speaker implies the old man is still proud of his tattoo because he wears a “tight black T-shirt / rolled up to show us who he was” (11-12). The speaker does note the man’s reduced power and inability to distinguish himself...