Hope

New life new leaf new page
new phase new phrase
erase the rage
that ate
the void
called heart
that hurt

and fell dead
like a leaf
flew life
and then

grew again
old pain

like leaves

like grass

like roots

underneath

the dearth

of an earth
where lies

all lies

like truths
to make a truce

with death
once again

 to be born

forlorn 

and anew

unlived

undead
And yet

nothing’s new
Except hope
All is dead

 

What is a Woman?

What is a woman, if she is not what she feels

What she sees within, what she thinks, or spills

In her words, or hides within her head and above

her world? Is she less than life and more than love?

When is she ever good enough? Why are the mountains

A step higher than her, and the oceans, more profound? 

Why, when she can fly, she chooses to fall, or walk slow

So that some men can walk past her? Why is her flow

Her fight, her feat, and fulfillment are nothing

If not measured against men? I’ll tell you, this thing

Called woman is more than what it brings

As a dutiful daughter, a disgraced lover, or a poet

Distraught. She’s the wind that blows unseen, untouched

She’s the land they crave and the storm they dread.

She gives them life, lying buried and dead.

           

What is a woman, if not a dream or its charm?

What is a dream, if it is not seen from,

Through, or with her eyes? If a dream is

The darkest brew of thoughts that screams

For existence, in a voice of silence

To the ears that are forever deafened

By life’s continual curse,

If a dream, like a chaotic flux

Lives inside us and dies when we awaken,

Then what is a dream, if not a name for a woman?

 

What is a woman if not a rage, unaddressed?

She is a chaos, derailed and transgressed

In a life never lived in a dream never dreamt.

Never seen, never heard, never read, but torn apart

By a blind mouse; yet she’s the one who sees

She enflames, exhumes, precedes, and proceeds.

She is the essence and the existence of essence

She is the absence in herself; she denies all absence.

Unity in wrath, she’s one in every fragment.

She is a dirge, a hymn. She is her own chant.

 

About the Poet

Fayeza Hasanat, a Bangladeshi-American writer, teaches at the English Department of the University of Central Florida. Fayeza Hasanat is also acclaimed for her translation works. She has translated the first known creative piece, titled Rupjalal, by a Bengali Muslim woman from colonial India. Her translation of a reportage on the raped women of the liberation war of Bangladesh, titled, A War Heroine, I Speak, is recently published from Bangladesh.   The Bird Catcher and Other Stories, her debut story collection was published in November 2018 (Jaded Ibis Press). Bengal Lights Publishers has published its Bangladesh edition in the same year. Her second story collection, A Serenade of Love is scheduled to be published from Bangladesh in 2020. She is currently at work on a novel.