Hissing Morning Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Air whispers
and hisses
and whistles

with chirping insects
hopping in
with a foggy cloud.

Early morning
is not
turning on its tap
of light
to shower

and spray
glass doors
and window panes

with digging
cutting
and prodding rays

and pierce
nylon curtains
and glass
stretched doors,

but growing
into a coin screen
thickening
into a cloud
and pale smoke.

(ii)

The morning
draws down
macaroon
cream blinds
and rolls up slats

before shedding
beige
and moth gray
feathers
and afterfeathers

and expanding
wings, as it flaps
open
grayer air.

(iii)

A sky's bush
of clouds
is still clearing,
as we hear
hissing fangs

in the dim,
haze-covered
garage
attached
to the main house
by a staircase.

In the elastic
alabaster air
stretching its wings
to the contours
of a thickening gray,

a feathery
wind and breeze
light up
the sky into a flame

of sunlight
hissing with rays

from a tumbling
sun burning
lower layers of air,

as they turn
pearl and cotton.

(iv)

Diangha,
the youngest child,
climbs in

from the garage
side's
hissing staircase,

as he pants
and blurts out

there're snakes
in the car.
Snakes, he bawls
out again -

snakes, I scream,
jumped down
from that sky's bush

to thicken
the sun-burnt
stretching
brownish air.

I race
to the garage
and find
no snakes,

but an engine
in motion,

my daughter
having cranked
up the car
to warm up,

as a cooling storm
heats up,
a snarling, hissing
and whistling

caterwauling box
biting off
morning's silence.