Edward Salem Edward Salem is the author of Intifadas (2026) and Monk Fruit (2025) and the co-founder of City of Asylum/Detroit. His work appears in Granta, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and elsewhere.

Elsewhere | Poetry

Edward Salem

I laughed at the phrase you used, Emptied yourself. I thought, It’s true, there’s nothing left. I didn’t remember how many drinks I’d had as I poured another. Who cares, I whispered to myself, thinking on our day together, how glad I was it was over — earlier, four men walking toward the border were vaporized by a drone that hovered haltingly like a buzzing bumblebee before the stigma of...