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.
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