A Summer Playlist and a Collection of Poems (Risner)

One of the few positive outcomes from my pandemic quarantine has been the resurgence of my writing practice, both poetry and prose. Not only have I returned to the first draft of the novel I started May of 2019, but I also gave myself a goal this year: to have my full-length poetry collection ready to submit to presses.

As summer inched closer, though, I turned to something else: finalizing a summer playlist that I yearly share with my friends and family. Starting in January, I listen to music in a variety of genres and choose possibilities for this playlist, saving them along with anything I had not selected in previous years. Sometimes the songs are what one might hear on the radio; sometimes they sound like mainstays at a barbecue or a beach; and sometimes the song itself boasts a summery feel to it or mentions the summer months, or heat, or another specific trademark of the season. For example, this year, I included Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” because it had all three of the aforementioned components. The lyrics themselves directly alluded to summer (“Tastes like strawberries on a summer evening / … / Baby, you're the end of June”). I could easily have heard the melody and voice issuing forth from a boombox at the park or at a backyard party. It’s also a super-catchy pop song. The same criteria held true for HAIM’s “Summer Girl”: the title, the captivating refrain with tenor sax in the background, the laid-back feel of the vocals and the tune itself.

For 2020, as I put together a much larger list than in previous summers, another idea popped into my head: I should write a poem inspired by each of the songs on this mix!

So I did. I listened to each song on its own, and – as I sat there with my earphones – I’d pay attention to the lyrics along with the melody. I also ruminated on situations that were taking place in my life or in the world at large … and I just started writing. The end result was Five Seconds Could Last Five Years.

Many poems borrow lyrics from the songs themselves. In others, like a poem inspired by Jay Som’s “Superbike,” I don’t include lyrics from the song at all. In this poem, I initially thought about what enters my mind when I imagine a superbike. The film E.T. appeared immediately. I also thought about superpowers and likened the pursuit of them to an exercise routine. But how to retain such physical fortitude during the pandemic? This led to me discussing people who refuse masks and my opinions about that stance. I zipped back to summer at the end and discussed watermelon, my favorite fruit, as well as the potency of the sun and how to keep it when I know it will be gone by December.

The poems in the collection explore what summer means to me and how I interact with the season, even with the realities of 2020 stark and open and unchecked. In previous summer playlists, many of the songs were cheerful, hazy, and rather carefree. That element is still present. However, this year, the playlist is tempered by songs with heavier lyrics and sounds reflecting the current state of things. There is at times frustration, unease, and even moments of helplessness. I think of the full-time job I suddenly did not have as July began; I think about the pandemic still persisting; I think about the protests in response to George Floyd’s murder; I think about how close we are to climate catastrophe; I think about the upcoming presidential election. I put these emotions together to spark tension, to produce something much different from what I had done in the past. But I think 2020 calls for something different.

***

“Superbike”

-- as sung by Jay Som --

I imagine the stars drinking in my cells as they trail behind me, as I bike like Elliott rainbowing over the moon, as I pedal more feverishly than those on recumbents in a line back when I went to the gym. If I see someone on their way to the gym now, mask-less, they also must be heartless. A mix of Tin Man and Phantom of the Opera after Christine Daaé rips off his white face covering. The trashcan opens its mouth, eats each pile of thought-scraps I fling at it. What a diet.

But what I want to think about this afternoon are watermelons sliced into triangles on paper plates with a paper plate face down on top of each slice, hiding the juiciness from the ants and the flies and the other picnickers. A giant pitcher of lemonade – with a little somethin-somethin in it – sparkles in the sun. Bumblebees hang, bob, on spent blooms of catmint. The sunset ambers once every other day in Cleveland over the summer. The second the city freezes, I grab as much of the sun as I can and keep it in my pocket until there’s an overabundance of light again.

Kevin A. Risner’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Glass, Lines+Stars, Mineral Lit Mag, Ocean State Review, Variant Lit, and others. He is author of My Ear is a Sieve (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and Lucid (The Poetry Annals, 2018). He also published Five Seconds Could Last Five Years this year (https://gumroad.com/l/xxsyv). If you purchase this collection, the money you give will go to an organization or movement of your choice; he has provided four options, but you can request another, if you’d like.