NEST OF HONEY: A BLUES
FOR SAMSON
after Luca Giordano’s painting
Samson and the Lion
“…and Samson turned aside
to see the carcass of the lion: and,
behold,
there was a
swarm of bees and honey in the
carcass of the lion.”
-- Judges 14:8
I killed a lion with my
hands, yanked its mouth ‘til it was
torn;
Said I killed a lion with
my bare hands ‘til its jaw was bloody
and torn.
That lion died such an
awful death, it cursed the day it was
born.
With the strength in my
hair, I turned that lion into a hive of
bees;
Said I went to that lair
and turned that lion’s corpse to a nest
of
honey for the bees.
But I had no clue a bee
named Delilah was about to come and
sting me.
That woman Delilah put a
spell on me and I let her in my bed.
Her body was tight, she
loved me right and I put her in my bed.
Then she called the
Philistines to put out my eyes
and cut the hair off my head.
She ripped my heart like
I ripped that lion and brought me to my
knees;
Said Delilah was the
poison that killed my power and brought
me to my knees.
She turned my body into a
corpse and a nest of honey for the bees.
SUNSET
IN TUNISIA
after
Henri Rousseau’s The Dream
Not the lion who stares frightened,
almost hypnotized, under the blue lotus;
nor the wide white moon
brighter than the day’s gray light
Not the elephant gazing sideways from
the trees
like a tropical hieroglyph;
not the yellow-feathered bird high in
the branches
who seems to be flying backwards
Not the indigo dove poised perfectly
amid the orange clusters of a
fruit tree;
Not the monkey who is either dangling
from a limb
or waving its hands in victory
Not even the naked woman
who is reclining, or floating,
whose
brown hair twists past
her petal-pink nipples, her
cloud-colored skin
No: The door and key to this dream
are where the naked woman points her
stubby finger:
to the obsidian-fleshed woman
planted among the flowers and ferns,
dressed only in a skirt with stripes
the colors of a forest and sunset in
Tunisia ;
Her dusky fingers strumming a flute,
her breath channeling mystery,
the trees and ferns and lions at her
feet,
rattled and entranced with her song;
its music as deep as the roots of this
jungle,
as sly and quick as the snake
slipping through the grass
Shayla
Hawkins lives in Detroit, Michigan and
won the 2008 Canute A. Brodhurst Prize
in Short Fiction from The Caribbean
Writer. She is a graduate and inaugural
member of the Cave Canem
Workshop/Retreat for