SOIL POEM 
 

The soil is chrome

here. Young men work it

with mules and plows.

The figs are light green.

Hamza bites into a fig.

Silver fluid streams down

her chin and wrist.

When I look at her

from an angle with less sun

the fluid is just clear red. 

It isn’t sexual mania

to the extent it’s land lust.

I just fuck the women.

I take them to cemeteries

where we can have privacy.

I masturbate over my grandmother’s

ankles. 

The jeep lights are orange in the night

and whirl as stray dogs scatter.

I slide my drenched prick back

into my underwear to hide.

I got into Wadiya’s heart,

I got into Basimeh’s heart,

I got into Tamara’s heart,

I know I did. 

I walk the village at night

detecting scents and following them

to street corners, to goat pens,

garbage pits and abandoned homes,

limestone walls jagged and off-white,

dusty snakes and wide black beetles

living in the dark debris.

I hear their shadows,

smell their excrement.

I follow other scents

to groves of olive trees.

I sit in the softened soil

and crack open an Arab beer.

I finger the crumbs of soil,

smashing a pile in my palm.

I inhale at my palm through my nostrils.

The red dust makes me sneeze.

I dab my tongue in the center of my palm,

taste, and spit calmly, watching my

white foam dissipate on the soil.

I lie on my back and stretch out,

feeling the cool soil on my

naked shoulders and neck.

I think of lying on ground beef,

that this is maybe what it feels like.

Or ground lamb or ground meat of any kind.

I think of ground human meat.

I think I’d try anything once. 

It is not sexual mania.

Perhaps it is just mania.

A slippery black leach on

my sanity. I pry the slippery slug off

and fix it to my neck, my prick.

My prick goes soft.

This is uncomfortable.

I hear jazz. Though I’m in

Occupied Palestine I hear

jazz. I start to fuck.

I fucking dance.

I kick soil and shout

happily. The Bedouins and

the settlers look into their

distances. The night can be

the hazy humid hologram of a beetle.

Everything in it, darkened debris. 

I clobber an olive tree.

My skinned knuckles push out

plasma––it looks of olive oil.

I punt kick the black leach.

It’s slippery on the muscled top

of my foot. I hear the small thud

in the distance. No, I don’t,

the jazz is too loud, is loud enough,

but I want to have heard its thud. 

From the settlement, a spotlight

comes on. All their roofs are

orange-red, with pure white bodies.

I run toward the settlement.

I do not sprint, I run patiently.

I want to control my heart.

The closer I get I know

I will be arrested.

Perhaps it is likelier

I will be shot at.

I edge toward their land.

I see their houses––white squares, orange roofs.

Barbwire curly-Q’d laterally, the spotlight.

I just want to fuck their women. 

Their dark windows have open screens.

They feel safe. They are safe. No Arab

has ever really infiltrated a settlement.

I turn and see bundled specks of light

littering the dark landscape––Arab villages,

that one mine. I hear hyaenas breathing.

I listen to the weak wind––I lost the jazz running.

I hear soldiers’ voices. I crouch. They rotate the spotlight,

searching the landscape. The soil shines in the spotlight.

There are the hyaenas, a pack of them. Their eyes gleam.

They’re still, the spotlight moves away and they cackle

and scurry. I am sexually manic. I unbuckle and unzip

and slide my blue jeans down, pulling them off my dirty ankles.

I take off my underwear. Completely naked I dare them

as if daring was power enough. I crawl on the ground

moving toward them through the soil and rocks. 

My chest hair combs the soil.

My stomach hair combs the soil.

My pubic hair combs the soil.

The soil smoothes my penis. 
 
 
 

Edward Salem writes prose and makes videos. He is working toward his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.