“The Third Wheel” by Gianna Bullington

thethirdwheel gianna bullington

“The Third-Wheel”
By Gianna Bullington
A three-person party on the windowsill
City seeming disturbingly far from the gathering
The intimacy of the three spirits
One bringing them together using its attractive light
This mighty, powerful hold the one party member has on the others
A clear hold that the whole city can sense
This 3rd party member, so captivating
Its ability to burn
Its ability to be craved
Its ability to extract
Capable of taking the gaze off the other lover
Blinding each from the other
Was it its majestic light? Or its inviting warmth? Or the silly feeling one gets from it?
Who granted this 3rd entity its persuasive sorcery?
The two lovers made their decision
Collectively knighted the flame inventor
Two peasants ruled by the thing they made
It always happens this way.
Reference Image:
Explanation of Art:
My poem is an interpretation of the amazing painting that was in the Halsey. The first
aspect that I noticed was that the two people were not looking at each other. For some reason
this was not something I could move on from. I decided to take this feature of the work and run
with it by making the lighter its on entity. In the process of creating a poem about how I
perceived the two-person party to actually be more of a three-person party because of the
intense gaze towards the lighter, it got me thinking about how we humans create the things
that then come back to have power over us. A human created the lighter which can burn
cigarettes, another item obviously invented by humans. These material things that we create
can often have enough power to deter us from humans, the creators themselves. In the picture,
I decided to use this idea of the gaze being toward the lighter and not each other as a way to
comment on how easily us humans let material items take away from intimate, interpersonal
moments. I broke up the stanzas in the way that I did simply based on what made sense to me.
The first stanza introduces the idea of the lighter being its own ‘person.’ The second stanza
describes the lighter and expresses that the speaker sees this entity to have much power over
the individuals. The third stanza is emphasizing its claim of the flame being in the dominant
position which is why this idea of the knight and peasants metaphor was used. The last
statement is an overall critique of our material world and how that can take away from life’s
purest and most intimate moments as well as the almost dark relationship between human
creations and its creators.
I did not use generative AI to create this poem