"Delilah" by Trevor Ketner

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( January 14, 2019 [Delilah]( [Trevor Ketner]( A bird, a bee, a sycamore tree, I’ve never been as strong as anyone thinks—there were times when, of course, I cried—at movies mostly, at television shows, those fictive lion’s ribs and honey, releases, built to house feeling so it is shameless. I am shameless as in I’ve run out of it. I always pictured Delilah as a man— combs alchemized to a gold men tempt me— and I understood Samson as a fiction— unconvinced of masculinity— so I felt him, I felt him as Delilah did. lung, unbreathing, sweet. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Trevor Ketner. Used with permission of the author. [Ketner reads "Delilah."]( About This Poem “As someone raised in the fundamentalist Christian church, I am, and my poems are, still haunted by Biblical images. (The question I posed to myself as I learned to understand my gender: Am I Delilah or Samson?) As an assigned-male-at-birth, non-binary person who chooses not to shave, I have to deal with the legacy of masculinity my religious upbringing conditioned me to feel entitled to and expected me to perform, as well as the privilege I experience as someone often read as a man. How do I reconcile these inheritances with who I am at this moment, especially when I’ve come to realize there’s no killing the place you come from? Like Delilah, who couldn’t kill Samson outright but brought about the conditions of his death, I left the moment of writing this poem with Samson’s hair in my hand.” —Trevor Ketner [Trevor Ketner]( Trevor Ketner is the author of Major Arcana: Minneapolis (Burnside Review, 2018), selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2018 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. They work as an editorial assistant and live in Manhattan with their husband. [Major Arcana: Minneapolis]( Poetry by Ketner [Major Arcana: Minneapolis]( (Burnside Review, 2018) "Eden Incunabulum" by Brian Teare [read-more]( "A Man's World" by Tracy K. Smith [read-more]( "Exclusively on Venus" by Trace Peterson [read-more]( January Guest Editor: TC Tolbert Thanks to [TC Tolbert](, author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Tolbert]( about their curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [make a monthly donation]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038