Middle of the Edge
(written during the great Midwestern drought and the first month of the Intifada)
I live in Pacifica, on the cliff edge of a green continent.
My mother came here from the Midwest, her parents, from the Mideast.
She married a man from Ramallah
which now sits on the cutting edge of the Palestinian uprising.
Both places &emdash; the Midwest and the Mideast &emdash;
are on the edge now. The Midwest suffers
from dry skies, turning blue dirt clods into the gray ash
one would find at the edges of a desert.
In the Mideast, the Palestinians are taking into their own hands
the matter, which, in this case, are stones
big enough to break tour bus windshields, shatter finger bones
and lacerate the flesh around the skulls of Israeli soldiers
which they would were it not for the plastic riot gear protecting those skulls.
These soldiers fire back with plastic non-lethal bullets which lacerate
kidneys, shred lung tissue, puncture heart muscles, break bones.
These Palestinians fight the plastic with stone anyway because
they feel caught in the middle
between the PLO and the ruling Likud.
They want to push the matter to the edge.
Out here in Pacifica, I feel in the middle
of some spinning center, everything moving
but me, while blue waves wash polished stones
and plastic bottles, wordlessly
onto Rockaway Beach.
by Paul Totah