Adi Magazine

New Neighbors

by Edward Salem

My short, pot-bellied uncle
takes me up to the roof of his house
at the top of the hilly village
to show me the far-reaching landscape.

Past strings of his daughter’s laundry,
and pots of measly tomato plants
swaying in the warm wind, he points
to hills and hazy clusters of light,
quizzing my memory.

I correctly name the nearby villages
and Ramallah. I see the spread
of glinting amber light and name it,
Jerusalem. He jibes that I don’t know

what to call the bright white cluster
between the villages—the new settlement,
middle-class villas with manicured lawns
patrolled by scrawny husbands, machine guns
slung over their backs like acoustic guitars.

They’re making a fine Swiss cheese
out of Palestine, my uncle quips.
It’s almost ready to eat.

The Palestinian Chair

by Edward Salem

God said (and already you can tell
I’m making this up),
If you lift a rock, I am there.
If you lift a finger, I am there.
If Blackwater rips out your fingernails,
I am there. God said,

If you’re strapped into the contraption
the Israelis told the CIA they call
the Palestinian Chair,
hands tied to your ankles,
forcing you to lean forward in a crouch,
forcing all of your weight onto your thighs
as if you’ve been trapped in the act of kneeling
to pray, knees suspended above the floor,
arms pinned below your legs, blindfolded,
your head collapsed into your chest,
wheezing and gasping for air,
a pool of urine at your feet, too tired to cry,
but in too much pain to remain silent,
and the chair locks you into a permanent squat
from which you can’t recover,
I am there.

God said, when twenty million Yemenis
are silhouettes under pallid veils of skin
dying of starvation in 2016,
2020, 2024, 2028, 2032
while you scarf down lamb agadah
at Yemen Café in Hamtramck,
I am there.

After life is over,
you realize that

You were there.
For all of it. 
It was all you.