A Poem by Raymond Luczak

Author: Poetry Editor

April 3, 2018

This month, as a part of the Poetry Coalition’s new initiative Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight will feature poems of and about the body. This week’s feature is by Raymond Luczak.

 

A New California
for M.W., a deaf-blind person with AIDS

 

when i first met you
________i had a deaf-blind boyfriend
we caught you staggering
________from sun and shadow
near the rock creek woods
________you had searched and found
________________no one to sex with

you hated those orange glasses
________you were going blind
you knew it every time you stumbled
________in the bars
you drank your vision away
________you were getting old
________________not caring anymore

so when you were diagnosed with it
________the tunnel vision of
your death
________lighted
faster than your orange glasses
________shattering its shrinking
________________panorama

each time i remember you
________i long to give you a new california
the sea of sunsets
________shimmering flames
where you would swim a fluid desire
________among mermen
________________groping you right back

——

RAYMOND LUCZAK is the author and editor of 19 books. His latest title is The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and online at raymondluczak.com.