by Dan Grossman

Where's your Water -- Hausa expression 

1. Well Talk 

The women pull on ropes of woven dume-palm:
up come the rubber buckets full of water.
"Have you heard?" asks Amina. "Hajera went
off into the bushes last night with Seku Garba.
Her husband Mustapha--he hasn't had
a hard-on since last dry season."
Amina's friends linger around the well
long enough to hear this, long enough
to pour the water into clay jars
and lift the jars onto their heads.
The women must now carry the water home.
The jars will sit in open courtyards
like newly revealed secrets
underground no longer, out in the sun.

2. Maradi Metal Workers

At the scrap heap Garba's sons cut
tire-retread into circular sheets
fastening them to metal rings
to make the rubber well buckets.
They make the rings from the axles
of old Peugeots. America has half
a billion cars, the man on BBC says.
Garba would like to see this. Garba
and his sons live in the city-center;
the Peugeots circle around them
until their axles or engines crack.

3. The Elders

The old men sit in the village square
weaving dume-palm fronds into rope.
The lack of rainfall is much on their minds.
It hasn't rained in ten days.
"God willing this wind will carry us storm clouds."
"What wind Abduli?"
"The wind blowing against my cheek."
"That's just a donkey farting."
"You, Issafou, you joke too much."
The rope grows longer frond by frond.
Towards dawn Abduli sees his wife,
no longer of this earth,
pulling water from the sky.

Dan Grossman writes: "I'm a returned Peace Corps volunteer (Niger '92-94) currently living in Indianapolis Indiana. I've been published in pLopLop (www.pLopLop.com), and Flying Island. I have work forthcoming in Yefief. I also have a chapbook of poems entitled Kilohertz Country out with Geekspeak Unique Press, the publishers of pLopLop."