Black and grey geometric tattoo of a roaring lion's head with an angular mane, covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric lion head on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large tattoo of a snarling lion's head, with its mouth open to show teeth and fangs, fills the upper arm and reaches onto the shoulder. The subject is drawn with angular, faceted linework that forms the mane, with the face built from bold outlines and softer grey shading. The image is in black ink and grey tones, with the design framed against plain skin and a dark background.

Geometric Upper arm Shoulder Lion Lion head Mane Roar Fangs

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dust had got into everything by the time the flatbed came in from the east, and Yusuf had already decided he would not take another broken thing off it. The driver, a boy from the coast with sunburnt ears, pulled back a tarpaulin and showed him a lion's head beaten out of old oil drums, its mane cut into hard planes like the folds of a map left too long in a glovebox.

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Yusuf had been welding in a shed beside the salt flat road for thirty years, and he knew metal that had been made to look like something. This had been made to look like a shout. The face was flat and forward, the jaw hinged so the lower plate could drop, and someone had riveted two rows of teeth along its edge, bent from the same tin as a petrol can. "A man ordered it for a restaurant," the boy said. "Then the restaurant shut and he didn't want to pay the freight."

For three nights Yusuf worked on the hinge while the wind pushed grit against the steel and the jaw gave a thin note, like a kettle thinking about boiling. On the fourth night he fitted a spring from a lorry seat, and when he pulled the cord the lion opened its mouth over the forecourt and held it open, patient as a customs officer. The boy wanted to sell it to a bar in the city. Yusuf shook his head and bolted it to the roof of the shed, facing the road.

At dusk the low sun came in behind the head and threw its jagged mane across the sand, long and sharp-edged, all the way to the tarmac. A convoy slowed as it passed the shed, and the drivers lifted their hands from the wheel, as if the thing might want to see their papers.