October 2022
one month after
Mahsa Amini died
by their hands,
arriving on motorbikes,
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,
we had just our voices
shouting, we pleaded
don’t shoot,
the regime that promised freedom,
turns its blind eye
looking us straight
in our faces,
they aimed for our eyes …
Poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue.
Bio:
After retiring from teaching high school English and English as a Second Language, Glenn Arthur Sweazey moved to Ottawa from Toronto. He leads a local group of writers, “In the Company of Writers,” when they meet twice monthly. He also teaches Newcomers Conversational English once a week at Ottawa’s Main Library. One past work includes a verse novel manuscript, The Lost Papers of Tom Thomson.
The poet has been aided in this project by his friend, an academic from Iran now living in Canada, who must remain anonymous. During the 2022 demonstrations, he and his wife were in Tehran.