print previewback JOSHUA BENNETT
Samson Reconsiders
One has to consider the material
conditions which produced this fate
-ful moment. A scatterplot of men slain
by jawbone. Violence as a kind of boomerang. Battle cries
at first sight of sun, the stretched bow
of these impossible arms, all that foreign blood
making magenta planets in the sand. Her beauty.
Enough gold to feed a family thrice over
if she budgets it right.
The most expedient option here
is to make this all about Delilah. Her easy
scissors. The vile ways of women lovely enough
to make you dry up the moat, damn the armor for scraps,
open the heart for new business, et cetera, et cetera.
But what about my player card?
The empty bed she could never bet on? What of the calls
from her countrymen, or their hungry gods, or the comeuppance
of a thousand boys left kinless by the same hands that held
her sleeping body like a lyre, built our kitchen table from scratch,
stroked her faithful, moonless hair every night
for minutes on end all because she once said
that it helped with the insomnia? 
On Flesh
Samson Reconsiders
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