Kevin A. Risner

Church Youth Group Lock-Ins Are Supposed to Be about Getting Closer / To God


A few memories of one in particular: the time
when one of the leaders gives a devotional and I stare
 
at this portrait of Caucasian Jesus. Eyes
peer back, alive, roam the narthex.
 
Later on that night, a group of us plans
to hunt for whichever beings haunt this 50-year-old
 
building. A story from someone else haunts
me: one evening, her mother entered the church
 
alone, heard organ music emanating from the sanctuary.
All doors were locked. She tiptoed to one
 
of the side doors. Peeked through a window. Noticed
the reading light atop the organ. To see the sheet
 
music in front of a vacant bench was all it took.
My memory spins the music tinkling
 
like a haunted carousel. She burst out,
flew away, left the ghost to its own devices. But the hauntings
 
for us: Jesus’ eyes
following me and a door slamming shut of its own accord
 
on the third floor of the church wing. No one
in the hallway to slam it without being seen. No drafts
 
to force the door shut. My mind, my memory plays
its little tricks on me sometimes. Each detail about these spirits
 
in this stone-façade church: the portraiture,
the organ, the doors and all the other orifices, the truth
 
remains in every single detail, every
believable moment when I unravel threadbare pasts.


Kevin A. Risner is author of My Ear is a Sieve (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and Lucid (The Poetry Annals, 2018). His poems have been published in Rabid OakRandom Sample ReviewRiggwelterRise Up ReviewRising Phoenix Review, and other journals that don't begin with R. He teaches writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art.