We’re Humming Al Green Songs As We Get Ready for Bed by Kevin A. Risner
We’re Humming Al Green Songs As We Get Ready for Bed
and during the opening I-I-I’m
so in love with you,
whatever you want to do
is all right with me,
we exhale and sigh.
After our first dance
back in 2015,
“Let’s Stay Together”
invited others
to join us on the wood-paneled floor.
Swerve, lean, circle around, croon,
loving you whether, whether
times are good or bad
happy or sad.
Now, you peer at me through the mirror
as you brush your teeth.
I lie in bed playing at reading,
a casual reflection on middle-age habits
in the time of COVID.
We never thought it would ever happen:
there would be a smudge of red skies,
wind, asphalt summers, plum
trees dropping fruit throughout
my grandmother’s backyard.
You know, as a kid, I mowed around
those plums every week, ate Whopper Juniors
with her when I was finished.
That 1998 heat was so oppressive,
like books stacked on top of one another.
Mary, as soon as you can,
let’s melt this summer
form into something magnetic and bright --
you’ll always be my greatest dream.
Kevin A. Risner is a product of Ohio. He is the author of Do Us a Favor (Variant Literature, 2021); You Thought This Was Just Gonna Be About Cleveland, Didn't You (Ghost City Press, 2022); and There's No Future Where We Don't Have Fire (ELJ Editions, 2025). He has work published recently or forthcoming in Gordon Square Review, Great Lakes Review, Major 7th Magazine, Moist Poetry Journal, and The Ocean State Review.
