19

For today’s prompt, write a “suspicious minds” poem. When I assembled these prompts more than a month ago, I considered this one of my more unusual (and more creative) prompts. Click here to see Elvis Presley perform this song. Anyway, I’m thinking there are a few ways to go with this prompt. One, write a poem in which the narrator is either suspicious of someone or is the actual one under suspicion. Two, write a poem that plays with repetition–as this song does. Three, write a poem that is a performance poem spectacular (as this song is here). Of course, you can always bend and blend the prompt as you see fit.


Free


Where I am now
There is a treadmill
on a level above a pool.
Glass makes the pool visible and in it
a woman who smiles and smiles
and her boy balances on a floating pad and falls off
and they laugh and smile.


She gazes to the end of the pool where
a man plays with his boy.


I think they are not married.
They are traveling together - the two couples 
and their children.  
And she is smiling and looking.
And a man comes behind her.
And she turns away from him.
Plays with the child.
Looks to the end of the pool.


The man is serious, follows her gaze
wants to touch her but 
he doesn't even try.  She dives away.


She emerges, smiling
at everything, but him.
She delights in the boy.
She looks to the end of the pool
for the other.  Her husband
gets out of the pool, unnoticed.


I run
and run


and run
from that.