We stand together, sisters of the porch,
our bodies remembering the raw scorch
of chisel hammering away
our tender marble to display
how we held the weight
of our hips, the plait
of hair down
to our gowns,
until we
stood free,
embraced by sun.
But they weren’t done.
Men with massive shoulders
of strength to move boulders
sheathed us in cloth and rope
as they dragged up the slope.
Then we were tilted up and forward,
pushed and aligned as ordered.
This took them a few days.
No one held us in praise
of our uniform bevy.
They complained how heavy
we were. If we were their mothers,
they’d have treated us like feathers,
with utmost kindness and respect.
We didn’t know what to expect,
but certainly not this beam
squelching our dreams.
Each night on this damn porch
we await the flicker of torch.
Published on Mid Atlantic Review
Far From Atlantis: Poems
Raymond Luczak juxtaposes elements from mythology and the supernatural against his childhood memories growing up in Ironwood, Michigan.
In Far from Atlantis, Raymond Luczak makes use of traditional poetic forms to tell the stories of two vastly different worlds: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which often looks like an island on the map, and the fabled island of Atlantis. The poems in this collection are rooted in the natural world, with the power of water as a means for escaping the cruelty and tedium of an ableist society…
