Logo, MacQueen's Quinterly
Listed at Duotrope
MacQueen’s Quinterly: Knock-your-socks-off Art and Literature
Issue 23: 28 April 2024
Poem: 197 words
By Susan Shea

Power

 
he was a charged particle boy 
who liked to scrape paint off your walls 
lightning bolt through your house 
make your healing crystals fall 
off their shelves, shatter on your floor 

he grew high-school tall with huge 
streaks of fuzzy hair growing in all 
directions making you wonder if he 
had tested putting his metal toys 
in your electric sockets just for fun 

he sat calmly with his frizzled hair 
in his holiday chair listening to all of us, 
with our masters’ degrees concealed 
under the table with our manners, 
tell him he should go to college so he can 
light up the world, amount to something 
big and mighty, be worthy of his place 

and in response, he opened up his switch 
to calmly light our way, to tell us 
he was on his way, all in, signed up 
to be an electrician 

he knew he had to find out how to 
be with all the wild juices, go all out 
at his red speed, to find a force worth taming 

the one that hides behind our walls 
the one that calls him to command 

his stop and go 
with all the flow within him 

Susan Shea
Issue 23 (April 2024)

is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. Since third grade, she has been a poet. In the mid-1990s, she wrote poetry in her spare time, and had some poems accepted in Pudding, Plainsongs, The Pegasus Review, and others. While working with struggling children and families, Susan’s hobbies had to be gentle on her mind and heart, so she made quilts, jewelry, and rock sculptures. In some ways, she is still recovering from dealing with so much sadness for so long.

Since she returned to writing poetry last year, more than 100 of her poems have been accepted for publication by Across the Margin, The Avalon Literary Review, Ekstasis, Feminine Collective, Gastropoda, Invisible City, Litbreak Magazine, Military Experience & the Arts, Persimmon Tree, Vita Poetica, and others.

 
 
Copyright © 2019-2024 by MacQueen’s Quinterly and by those whose works appear here.
Logo and website designed and built by Clare MacQueen; copyrighted © 2019-2024.
Data collection, storage, assimilation, or interpretation of this publication, in whole
or in part, for the purpose of AI training are expressly forbidden, no exceptions.
⚡   Please report broken links to: MacQuinterly [at] gmail [dot] com   ⚡

At MacQ, we take your privacy seriously. We do not collect, sell, rent, or exchange your name and email address, or any other information about you, to third parties for marketing purposes. When you contact us, we will use your name and email address only in order to respond to your questions, comments, etc.