With Samson’s Strength In Mind

I bow to my altar of scars,
white as lion bones
on my arms, each an icon
to violence
which first stirred in me
when schoolgirls taunted
my odd physical strength.
I could heft an ax,
split oak
easily as twigs.
The girls cast stones
at the seashore.
I mortared them into a pillar.
With cinders of star
I burned open my body
until I knew.
Walking past fishermen
on the city pier, I noticed
their barbed hooks,
the broken bottles,
the barnacles’ razor mouths.
With them I could tear off
my carton of skin, sunder
what others threaten to maim,
my impulse inevitable
as the harbor buoy’s
dong dong.
I hid among boulders
of the seawall
and whittled bones
on my skin
until blood appeared
and I licked it,
as when the skeleton
Samson left on the earth
broke into honey.

Emily Warn