“Tattoo” is a 15-line poem written in free verse. The line lengths are fairly even and contain between 9 and 11 beats, but they do not employ a consistent pattern. There is no rhyme in the poem, nor does it employ stanza breaks. It uses an observational and unreliable narration by an unknown speaker. The speaker has no immediate connection to the subject, an old man sporting a tattoo wandering a “yard sale” (Line 10). The poem uses the informal diction of conversational speech and does not make any literary allusions. The poem creates movement by mixing the speaker’s straight-forward visual descriptions with imaginative leaps regarding the motivations and feelings of the subject. This specific juxtaposition is critical for creating the emotional charge of the poem. The speaker offers an objective observation then peppers in an assumption regarding motivation or emotion every third or fourth line.

The poem relies heavily on imagery appealing to the reader’s sense of sight. This is strategic because the speaker’s visual notations create a defined sense of