Hen At Dawn Poem by Nassy Fesharaki

Hen at dawn

Feel it is summer night
-spread is mattress
-floor is of stone, veranda.
-Adobe-walls are from hay and mud,
-covered with plaster, clean-white.
-I sleep as I must, I am child.

Darkness falls and stars
-fill the endless sky
- "Someone died"
-says mother in reply.

I asked her of the one on the run
-escaping with a wake as a line,
- (now I know, are comets.)

Had not car, neither bike
-no use for radio
- "Televised" was a word unheard of;
-no place for TV.

On and off I feel the chilliness of breeze
-I cuddle with pillow;
-pull quilt, sleep tight
-comes to me great joy from warmth.

Shades of night keep changing
-till come the dawn, morning
-and the roosters crow.
-Walk on toes dad and mom;
-they go for prayers, leave me alone.

Far later in box came
- "TV" or "Tele-Vision"
-a new podium, is as mosque and or church
-changed meanings of the hell and heaven
-has nightly advertise for life-sex.
-Died, dried meaning of past dusks,
-depleted became dawns.
-Screens, speakers full of sex; sex, sex, sex.
-Rooster lost and won hen…

Trainers are rapist
-in sport, gymnastic
-preachers molest kids
-president in white house
-is bully and racist and sexist.

The US diplomat resents to pay the rent
-immune is of law; "Canada's", Quebecois"
-in long care, the patients fight themselves,
-Lebanon hosts new Shatila-Refugee-Camp!

The parties (left and right)
-are filled with harassments.

The kidnapped, turned hero
-is in fact criminal…

I sit and read poem
-though try to calm down
-Ilya Kaminsky is no help
-when writes of "Fire Squad"!

"Balconies and sunlight"
-take me to veranda
-to mattress of cotton
-we unrolled every night
-and re-rolled when woke up
-made shadows on white walls
-our hands were puppeteers, cinema,
-to form cats and the dogs, wolves to fight.
-And smoke painted the round glass
-dark, grey and amber…

Shaky was the flame of the wick
-which snaked into oil; kerosene.
-Same flame acted as paint brush
-painting waves on ceiling; Surreal.
-The paint was a heat-form via pipe,
-sized ‘small', to ‘huge', ‘humongous.
-On canvas of ceiling I saw waves
-duplicates of the lakes by throwing pebbles
-into calm of water-reservoirs.