Poetry in the Mirror: The Empty Place of Eddie:

Today the rain washes your bloodAnd wipes it from the sidewalk There remains only your sunny smileAnd your tall baseball batLeaning against the wall, And your backpack full of booksWaiting for your shoulders. Curse the hand who made the gun Curse the hand who put it in the shopAnd curse the hand who pulled the trigger! I am cold and empty Like the shell of a bullet Because I know that your mother Will not pass any school again And will not sit on bleachers At any baseball field And will not open her empty oven To heat fragrant tortillas For your dinner. March 3, 2006 Majid Naficy fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife, Ezzat. He has published two collections of poems, Muddy Shoes (Beyond Baroque Books) and Father and Son(Red Hen Press) as well as his doctoral dissertation “Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature” (University Press of America) in English.