Today’s writing prompt is a poem by Ron Salisbury. You can write on the theme of the poem or the mood. You can use a line or a word for the writing prompt. Ready? Read and write. Just write, without worrying how your writing will sound.
Suicide Doors
Don’t put that in a poem, she said.
What? Don’t put what I said in a poem.
We talk and a week later I find what I said
in one of your poems. What’s the matter
with that? He’ll find out. He doesn’t read
poems. His friends will tell him. His friends
don’t read poems. Just don’t put me in your poems.
How about I make it in the 1960’s
and it happens in my 1951 Merc with suicide
doors, I got a D.A. haircut, smell of Bay Rum
and your angora sweater comes off on my sport coat.
Then what happens. Well, we could be in love.
We already are. I mean the crazy 60’s love
before birth control pills and we both smoke
and sneak bourbon from your father’s liquor cabinet
and try to figure out how to get some Trojans
because they’re not in every grocery store
and you have to ask the druggist for them
because they’re kept behind the counter
like cigarettes are now and because
he knows everyone in town, it’ll get around
so we drive all the way to Dexter on Saturday
night and I’ll try to be cool and see if
I can buy some and if I can’t we’ll take
our chances anyways. Do we do it in the
back seat? Yeah, the Merc had a giant
back seat. And you won’t use any thing
I said in the poem. Sure. Ok, but
bring a blanket and you have to go slow
and give me time to hang my sweater
over the seat so it won’t get ruined.
Ron Salisbury, author of Miss Desert Inn, (Main Street Rag Publications) lives in San Diego, CA, where he continues to publish, write and study in San Diego State University’s Master of Fine Arts program, Creative writing. Publications and awards include: Eclipse, The Cape Reader, Serving House Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Spitball, Soundings East, The Briar Cliff Review, Hiram Poetry Review, A Year in Ink, etc; Semi Finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize – 2012, Finalist for the ABZ First Book Contest – 2014, First Runner-up for the Brittingham and Pollak Prize in Poetry – 2014, Winner of Main Street Rag’s 2015 Poetry Prize.