American Poet Dan “Sully” Sullivan
Photo Credit: Sullivan and Sullivan Studio, Poet’s Official Website
Front Cover – Poetry Collection O Body by Dan “Sully” Sullivan
Photo Credit: Haymarket Books

My Poetry Corner July 2026 features the poem “Watch” from the poetry collection O Body (Haymarket Books, 2023) by Dan “Sully” Sullivan, an American poet and educator based in Bloomington, Indiana, with nearly two decades of experience in Open Mic Poetry performance and teaching. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he earned an MFA and MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Indiana University (2016-2019). Since 2019, he holds the position of Student Support & Registration Representative – Advance College Project at the university.

O Body, Sully’s second full-length poetry collection, delves into questions of masculinity, fatherhood, home, and learning to live in and love one’s own body.

We learn in “Wave Built in the Form of Prayer” that the speaker/poet is on the heavy side (pp. 13-14):

I get this gravity from my mom’s side. My father was always thin
& I don’t mean to speak of him like he’s dead—he’s not
thin anymore. I know the earth pulls us closer as we age, but his softer
body does not make me think of tombs. I think of passage & mirrors.

But this poem, as well as the collection, is also entwined with his relationship with his birthplace, Chicago, where he grew up and learned to be a man and navigate the world. Is it possible to separate our body, our being from the physical spaces that we occupy?

My relationship with my body/city has always been
complicated. I am never sure if it is mine….

I am on the outside & inside
simultaneously.

In “The Best Stories,” we learn that the speaker/poet was bullied in first grade (6 to 7 years old) for his fat body (pp.15-16):

I’m not sure when I first felt fat.
I do know that my first-grade teacher
told me to pull my shirt down
while reading out loud to the class
because my belly was hanging out.

Though he fought back against the bullies, the speaker/poet still carries a rage of those years. Loving a body ridiculed by others takes time.

… I know rage erupts
from large shadows in my gut.
Even today, as a man taking up space,
my rage is a child I struggle to know
how to hold….

Scattered throughout the collection are seven poems with the same title “On Looking at My Own Body.” The second poem expresses the speaker/poet’s discomfort with his body even in his wife’s presence (p. 18):

Whitney apologizes for posting a picture of me online without a shirt on as if she anticipates the way I wince when I catch myself on screen. I don’t want her to see me feeling unattractive…. It must be freeing for some folks not to think about their body when they walk into the office or a classroom or a bedroom. There is no easy way to feel uncomfortable….

In his fifth poem titled “On Looking at My Own Body,” the speaker/poet shares his story of losing 17 pounds over 14 months on a diet of smoothies and a strenuous exercise routine. But an 18-year-old student in his classroom is not at all impressed with his progress (p. 43):

[The student] pushes out I know YOU aren’t lifting as if I needed my own student pointing to my body with his words first thing on a Tuesday. No matter how much better this baby blue button-down fits than it did a week ago, language can always shape itself into funhouse mirrors.

The birth of his daughter opens the speaker/poet’s eyes to the patriarchal bias against the woman in the biblical New Testament. In the poem “House Built in the Form of Prayer,” he questions his own privilege as a person in a male body (p. 54):

… Mostly, I know of all the sons [Jesus] healed: the official’s boy in Galilee, the widow’s / in the book of Luke, then lepers, the deaf & blind. What miracles does Jesus do / for our daughters? I know what mothers do. I know the praise of strangers when I walk / the walk of grocery aisles with my daughter strapped in the cart— / what a good dad I must be, how present. How invisible it is when my wife shops for the same meals…. How often does / the bible use the word mother? What sacrifice. How do I use the word? / How is mother used? What answer. What saving grace. What act of noticing.

In the featured poem “Watch,” we accompany the speaker/poet as he navigates public spaces as a white male with a fat body (pp. 34-35):

Watch:

how, on your way in, the sweats you wear to meet unspoken dress codes draw glances.
how lobby small talk makes their eyes flit from your face to your shoulder to behind you,
how you might not even get that, like there’s someone more important on the room’s horizon.
how they see through you, despite any amount of body you have.
how people side-eye you on the treadmill then look away, quick.
how some guy opts for the next aisle over in the locker room like fat is infectious.
how your face undoes itself when it finally reaches the bathroom mirror.
how your shoulders unclench from their perceptive coils.
how you breathe when alone in your thoughts.
how your jaw eases when you get off your tenterhooks.

This invisibility, disconnection, and avoidance all change when he enters an empty pool. Gliding across the pool, he notices how the water responds to your gentle touch. Even when you push the water away, it still envelops you. He closes with the realization:

how it is just you, amassing the air you need.
how it is just you.
how everything here must move & then return.

In this moment, the rage of his inner bullied child is at peace. He finds acceptance of his body enveloped in the healing and life-giving water. He adapts his body/his being to the flow of life’s changes and challenges.

To read the complete featured poem “Watch” and learn more about the work of American poet Dan “Sully” Sullivan, go to my Poetry Corner July 2026.