3 Day Fox : A Tattoo by Katherine Dunn

3 Day Fox : A Tattoo Reviews

• 
  Arnstein

  The first and only poem published by Katherine Dunn; a rich but illusive mystery tale of dreams, ink, and myths.
  
  Tattoos are many things. They are images with aesthetic qualities, hence they are also art; we can appreciate their visual stimulations for their beauty alone, or see literal or symbolic meanings in them. But their imagery is affected by what they adorn: a living being, a personality, and as they attach themselves to their respective individuals, something unique results where one part of the unity affects the other and vice versa. Most often they become messages from the inner worlds of their bearers, truths thought so profound that they can stand to be made as eternal as their canvases. But does the anchor with the word ‘mom’ that ornates the sailor’s arm indicate that his mother is a mooring presence in his life, or does it state that it is the sea which gives him life? – deeply personalized as tattoos are their meaning can be quite unclear to the surrounding world. 3 Day Fox : A Tattoo preoccupies itself with these bonds between carefully and meaningfully compiled ink and the ones whom it is placed on; it acknowledges their mysterious nature to anyone but the sole enlightened, yet it provides testimony of their perceived importance to those who acquire them, and who in doing so must accept their life-changing nature and weigh their necessity against the downsides of permanency.
  
  So what makes a woman want to carry on her back a fox standing on vines with a dead crow at its feet? That question is actually a very good summary of the plot, and the three days of the poem is spent on a tattooist’s table, during which we are given a few cryptic but potentially very meaningful answers. It all depends on how we interpret the symbols.
  
      ”A fox means one thing here,” he said,
        “But there is an island to the North
           where women take that form at night;
           fox women, who eat men’s throats at dawn
           and leave the carcass for the sun.”
  
  “I live on the mainland,” she said, “In a small house
  at Thermopylae. For me this is a demon brother,
  a bandit sword to guard my back.” (p. 5)
  
  The Battle of Thermopylae has risen back into the consciousness of popular culture with the film 300, and with that story in mind one could see why she would want a sword with which to defend her back in case an enemy should slip behind her, through a hidden goat path, when she least expects it. The ‘fox women’ likely refer to the kitsune of Japan. (The tattooist’s name is Hang Lee, which is a Chinese name, and so we know he speaks from an Eastern Asian vantage point, but while China and Korea also have their own fox spirit mythologies similar to that of Japan, there is the fact that he names the place an island and that eliminates the other two possibilities.) Kitsune are foxes who either shape-shift into women or possess them, and some of the stories would have these spirits eat parts of men; with regard to the poem it is is worth noting that kitsune are often labelled as demons. Perhaps this indicates that the protagonist perceives the tattooed fox as a real entity, if so then that might be why Hang seems a bit reluctant to comply. Furthermore, there might be a cultural collision here since the word ‘demon’ stems from the Ancient Greek word ‘daimos’ which means protective spirit, a quite different entity than what Hang might have had in mind. The third quality attributed to the fox is that it is ”a bandit sword”; such a sword could be interpreted to be one that serves no loyalties beyond its wielder, meaning that the fox is a protector of her and her alone.
  
  The poem says little about the vines which the fox stands in, but amongst the more famous Greek fables we find the tale of the fox which could not reach certain grapes on a vine – does this suggest that this is a fox that does not take sour grapes from anyone? And what of the dead crow which might function as a scarecrow? It is connected to yet another tale told by the tattooist’s apprentice, translated by Hang:
  
  ”May Ling is from a fishing village on the coast.
  They split the fish and drape them on wooden racks
  to dry in the sun. Crows come to eat the fish, but
  her father catches the first crow in his net.
  He pierces the crows breast with a spike and hangs it,
  still living, by its feet above the fish.
  It struggles and sprays tiny drops of blood
  that spread a circle of fear. The other crows
  will not come inside it.” (p. 13)
  
  But even this is not an unequivocal answer; in fact, since the poem has no inner monologue at all, our best guess will still be insufficient to be more than guesswork.
  
  That 3 Day Fox : A Tattoo focuses so much on the implications and symbolizations of the image, yet leaves the reader with so few answers, is in itself a very clear indication of how personal the process of getting a tattoo is. The reader is served pretty much all the information there is except for the protagonist’s internal evaluation of it, and that this is still not enough to fully understand what the image is, is a point made loud and clear. Without any insight into her mental realm, it is unlikely that the reader will even be able to evaluate exactly which pieces of information are important and which are red herrings. Does that she is middle aged matter? (“I had my child when I was young,” she said. “Now he works in an office and has two secretaries.” (p. 7)) Or that she is a mother? Or that her son is successful? There is so much to process in just a single sentence, and with her thoughts sealed away from the readers so are they denied the answer key. Another indication of how great a weight the poem places on the process being strictly personal, is the fact that it feels the need to mention repeatedly that the tattoo parlour has a television set and that it is attended by someone at any given time, people who pays no attention to the whirring ink needle in the same room; the television is a spectacle intended for viewers, whereas the tattooing is for those concerned only. Even the placement of the dialogue underscores this by, as can be seen in the first quote above, placing her utterances in line with the rest of the text, while those of the others are places slightly to the side; clearly the others are distanced from her, and so she is the only one close to the true meaning behind it all.
  
  Dunn only published a single poem in her entire lifetime, though since it is labelled as the first ‘Arboreal Abomination’¹ it can be surmised that she had entertained the possibility of making more. The one she did grant to the world is heavily laden with potential for speculation and interpretation. It appears to hold at lest one very valid lesson and it is presented in a convincing and thorough manner. Its artwork by Lara, which has received undeserved little recognition in this review, is also perfectly suited to empower the effects of the text; the fox is crouched in a position which is simultaneously defensive and aggressive, a clear warning, but its intent is still sufficiently obscured so that the readers are allowed to make their own inferences from the text and be able to have this reflected in the image no matter what those inferences are. And the tale makes good use of the poetry format both to facilitate the tale being told and to present entire rationales through its structure alone. In particular the poetry format allows a vagueness in its presentations, a shortage of specifying facts which provides a demand for supplementation on the readers’ behalves, allowing/forcing them to substitute missing pieces from their own thought processes, an effect which, as previously pointed out, is so very important for its concept to work as well as it does. Such a poem, with so many effects and such depth of cogitation, would too often have become a difficult read suitable almost solely for those who are already accustomed to picking poetry apart, but impressively Dunn has avoided this and made a poem that is so down-to-earth that its readers do not need to be at all versed in the reading of poetry to get the full experience from it, which is a feat in itself.
  
  
  
  1. The poem is clearly self-published by Dunn, but it is uncertain whether she intended the name Arboreal Abominations to be just the name of a series of poems, or if it also functions as the title of publisher for this and would-have-been future works. This reviewer thinks the latter seems most likely, but there is really nothing that seems to indicate one of the alternatives above the other.