Poetry: “Osiris” by Edward Salem

Osiris

The men who chopped up Osama bin Laden’s body 
and scattered his parts in the ocean 
were too stupid to know about the myth 
they were enacting. They laid tarp 
like mobsters, and distributed electric hand saws 
as if to family members carving 
a prize turkey. 

Death is a prize 
in my dreams, the waking I win after 
terror. Sometimes when I’m falling asleep, 
I imagine myself wrapped like a mummy 
and thrown overboard, weighted to sink 
through the darkness to the total blackness 
of the ocean floor, my testicles put on ice 
and sent to my wife. Blind wormy fish, 

eels and gelatinous creatures slither at the bottom 
of the ocean, sensing their way across the cold, 
silken floor, roving for something to nibble, 
moving to the next thing and the next 
until they come to me 
and struggle, giving up, unable 
to chew through my sealed tight, 
perfect wrapping.

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About Edward Salem

Edward Salem is the author of Intifadas (Sarabande, 2026) and Monk Fruit (Nightboat, 2025). His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and elsewhere.