Eros sits on a cloud above us
annoyed, wondering
when we’ll kiss,
get this show on the road
so he can move onto
other, more picaresque
embodiments of bliss.
How can we tell him
(her, them)
that joy comes
from waiting,
wandering around
the apartment
until one or another
can no longer take it?
It’s not efficient, but it’s ours,
this begrudged dance
of attraction. Dawdling
to force your loved one
naked, so you can remember
what it was you missed.
Click here to read Jack Sullivan on the origin of the poem.
Image by Constanza Rossi Vibbot on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Jack Sullivan:
I have a tendency (ala my hero Frank O’Hara) to jot poems and stories down and then haphazardly store them away / forget about them. But after a brief Google Docs investigation, I saw this poem was time stamped November 2025: a period of time when I was fighting, making up with, and having sex with my partner, as well as reading the short play cycle Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. The second play (Kill) features a God of ambiguous denomination sitting on a cloud recounting the endless cycles of violence and tragedy found within Greek drama. I became tickled by the idea of Eros, or whatever you would call the deity of love and amorous feelings, watching two intelligent, mercurial, hard-drinking queer people fall out, and then find ways to remind each other why they fell in love in the first place.
This explanation probably doesn’t include every element that went into the composition of this poem, but usually some combination of life events + what I’m reading is the standard equation for a successful piece of work.
Jack is a queer writer and visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His prose, poetry, and drama can be found in Yes Poetry, Ghost City Review, Ouroboros, The Denver Quarterly, and Masculinity: An Anthology of Modern Voices.
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