SUZANNE RICHARDSON
Suzanne Richardson earned her M.F.A. in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Binghamton, New York where she's a Ph.D. student in creative writing at SUNY Binghamton. She is working on a memoir, Throw it Up, and a full poetry collection, The Want Monster which was recently named a finalist for the 2024 Saturnalia Press Book Awards. She is the current nonfiction editor for Harpur Palate. Her nonfiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, New Haven Review, Rejection Lit, and No Contact Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Bomb Magazine, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, and DIALOGIST. Her fiction has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Front Porch, and High Desert Journal.
Just now, a voice said, oversharing is giving away energy and keeping secrets is protecting it.
But I am not using protection in this poem.
I’ve been a student of power all my life. I was a girl, I am a daughter, and now I’m a middle-aged woman. I have watched my own power bloom and recede in varying spaces. Of course power is overt, political, public, but it’s also covert, intimate, private. I have seen its meaning and its consequences unfold in compelling, complicated, and sometimes tragic ways in my intimate relationships—for better or worse.
November 4, 2024