Maybe you wouldn’t really think that about him. 
His suit’s pretty cool, with his red power tie, and he knows 
how to stand with subdued swagger, in front of his Rothko, 

hand in pocket, body neither too tense nor too 
relaxed, with his smile the right combination of casual 
warmth and wily cool; he looks like the kind 

of guy who shits daffodils and pisses Pisco 
Sours—the kind of guy who’ll probably parachute, 
in that suit, onto a street corner in Bangkok 

while holding a bottle of Bordeaux in his hand so he 
can drink it with some goat dumplings that he’ll buy from a cart, 
and he’ll leave a 10,000 baht tip 

for the frail man who runs the cart, and someone 
will video it all and post to Insta, and the whole 
thing will go viral without him ever having 

bothered to post it himself—because “you know, 
it’s not a big deal, I just had a craving, and here, 
have a dumpling—they’re outrageous!”—that kind of guy. You know? 

The kind of guy whose aura attracts fireflies 
and miniature flying unicorns, so that merely 
by standing at the edge of a garden party he 

can minimize, as if he’d flicked his manicured index 
finger down the edge of a screen, the story 
you’re about to tell, and which you’ve been practicing in front 

of a mirror, because parties make you feel like a sprig 
of mistletoe swept off the street in a pile of slush 
on January 2nd, and you wanted people to know 

that you do have a personality, kind of, somewhere. 
And so it doesn’t occur to you that when 
he was little he had a stutter and a caved-in chest, and girls 

and boys didn’t talk to him except to laugh at him, 
and so sometimes when he looks in the mirror he still sees 
a jackass, though other people see him more 

as some kind of exotic llama (a great 
investment.) And now I’m realizing that you’re looking 
at him and not really thinking any of that 

at all, just thinking that he’s alright and you’re 
alright and I’m alright, and so now I’ve got 
to say, I really feel like a giant jackass. 

*The painting by Valvis was an ekphrastic prompt at Rattle online:
https://admin.rattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/james-valvis.jpg

Brian O’Sullivan

teaches English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He is a squad member of the podcast ThePoetrySpace_ and a poetry reader for Chestnut Review. His poems have appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online, Modern Haiku, ONE ART, Rattle, and Verse-Virtual among others; his fiction has appeared in Every Day Fiction, The Galway Review, and the anthology HOWL: New Irish Writing (2023 and 2024); and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Liars, haibun story by Brian O’Sullivan in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 32, June 2026)

⚡ Five Poems by Brian O’Sullivan (see especially “The Hunter of Ostara” and “An Irish Malediction”) in Lothlorian Poetry Journal (9 April 2026)

⚡ Fall: sestina and commentary by O’Sullivan (in response to a Rattlecast prompt), posted to Rattle online (30 October 2023)