FOUR POEMS

Delilah

—after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621

They’ve made a monster of me, marring my name
for eternity. I’m not Delilah,
but Laila. I loved

him. Each night, in bed,

after our bodies became one body,

he would succumb to sleep, resting his mane
in my lap. Dream

-starved, I’d wind his black locks,

their feathered curls, as if he were awho flew by means of his hair. How heavy