Cormorant

Your afternoon swim is a cold one:

it’s winter but the water 

would still be cold in May.

You search for lunch on the break

or just enjoy the way water, 

the colour of old glass bottles,

fills your ears when your head dips below the surface.

Bird, cormorant, you are what freedom is:

diving beneath one wave 

to re-emerge in the body of the next;

down the beach; far out at sea—wherever.

Wherever those black feathers take you.

Sunrise Apartment

Through a crack in the curtains, daylight catches

dust flecks, last night’s clothes, a slack condom

his ardent breath gathering at the nape of her neck

his fingers pondering her sleeping breast

his arm pinning her down by the waist

his coarse bare chest pressed against her naked back

his sex stiffening against her naked back—

A coast away, she wakes to the cry of a gull.

___________

Ellie Jenkins is a Bristol-based poet studying Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her work has recently been commended in Verve Poetry Festival's anthology on Beginnings and has previously featured on Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her poetry can be found on Instagram and Twitter: @thepoetryhag.