Sarah Maguire
Drinking the sea at Gaza
The rusted municipal standpipe
scalds in the noonday sun.
Wrenched open, it gasps,
then stops,
then coughs up
a wretched stuttered stream,
a warm brown bile,
metallic and briny,
that even the donkeys
won’t drink from choice.
The rusted municipal standpipe
stands in a puddle of slime,
a playground for cockroaches
as they freefall through drains,
then slip down the long-busted sewer
oozing its cloacal juice.
The foul stream seeps
down blundering alleyways,
past kicked-in doors,
past that tentative shop stocked
with yellowing boxes,
past sheetiron and snowcem,
past barbedwire and razorwire,
past children, barefooted,
the enamel already stripped
from their teeth,
lugging scratched plastic jerricans
bigger than they are
which they fill to the brim
with what-passes-for water
in Beach Camp, in Gaza,
where people are drinking
the sea.
Deep underground
the aquifer is emptied of rain.
The thick beds of sandstone
(open-pored, permeable, cool)
interleaved with layers
of silty clay and clayey silt,
are being sucked dry.
The watertable plummets.
The sea trickles in,
to be seasoned with chlorine
then plumbed along pipelines
to this rusting municipal standpipe
scalding in the noonday sun.
scalds in the noonday sun.
Wrenched open, it gasps,
then stops,
then coughs up
a wretched stuttered stream,
a warm brown bile,
metallic and briny,
that even the donkeys
won’t drink from choice.
The rusted municipal standpipe
stands in a puddle of slime,
a playground for cockroaches
as they freefall through drains,
then slip down the long-busted sewer
oozing its cloacal juice.
The foul stream seeps
down blundering alleyways,
past kicked-in doors,
past that tentative shop stocked
with yellowing boxes,
past sheetiron and snowcem,
past barbedwire and razorwire,
past children, barefooted,
the enamel already stripped
from their teeth,
lugging scratched plastic jerricans
bigger than they are
which they fill to the brim
with what-passes-for water
in Beach Camp, in Gaza,
where people are drinking
the sea.
Deep underground
the aquifer is emptied of rain.
The thick beds of sandstone
(open-pored, permeable, cool)
interleaved with layers
of silty clay and clayey silt,
are being sucked dry.
The watertable plummets.
The sea trickles in,
to be seasoned with chlorine
then plumbed along pipelines
to this rusting municipal standpipe
scalding in the noonday sun.
Page(s) 43
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