Black polynesian-style tribal tattoo covering the shoulder and upper arm, with solid black fills and geometric linework.

Polynesian tribal sleeve on upper arm

Blackwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A bold tribal design wraps around the shoulder and upper arm, built from bands of solid black fill, sharp triangular rays and repeated chevron and zigzag motifs. The linework is clean and even, and the solid areas are dense and dark. The ink is entirely black and grey on pale skin, and the design is framed against a dark background.

Blackwork Shoulder Upper arm Tribal Polynesian Geometric pattern Chevron Zigzag Sunburst Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on the Saturday market at Vaitere for nine days when Mere Tupou stopped selling combs and started counting the stalls still standing. Canvas sagged between the poles. Water ran along the channels between the paving slabs in neat zigzags, and the fishmonger had given up calling his prices, because nobody could hear him over the drumming.

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Her grandmother had told her that the sun did not leave the sky by choice. In the old days the rain had fastened it down, and only a bold pattern cut into a strip of bark could pull it loose. Mere had laughed at that when she was small. Now she sat under the tarpaulin with a bundle of bamboo and a knife, and her hands were shaking, though not from cold.

She cut the rays first, long points fanning from a single centre, then the band of stepped chevrons that pointed the way back to open sky. A boy from the boatyard came to shelter beside her and watched without speaking. When she finished, she pressed the strip flat on the wet table, and the zigzag border caught the grey light and held it for a breath.

The clouds did not part. They thinned, the way a net thins when the catch is lifted out, and by dusk the rain had dropped to a fine mist. Mere kept the strip. The boy kept the knife, and every market day after that the two of them cut new bands for anyone who asked, and nobody in Vaitere ever again let the sun go without a fight.