when you’re blue at the ocean it swallows you
you enter each other you merge
you become something old
barnacled
soft

sometimes I get down on the floor with my girl
and I stare into her eyes and she stares into mine and I stare into hers
and she stares into mine and she puts her paw on me and I put my hand on her
and I think why
don’t I do this with my kind

………………….draw my face as seagull
………………….draw my face as porcupine
………………….draw my face as wolf
………………….draw my face as orca whale
………………….draw my face as starfish
………………….draw my face as donkey
………………….draw my face as peregrine falcon

now reach inside
what do you find there

snakeskin
baby bunting

a most inviting belvedere
handsome ledges

from which peoples are said to have
“disappeared”

I have given up many times.



Ellen Welcker is the author of Ram Hands (Scablands Books, 2016), The Botanical Garden (2009 Astrophil Poetry Prize, Astrophil Press, 2010) and several chapbooks, including The Pink Tablet (Fact-Simile Editions, 2018). She lives in Spokane, Washington.

Photo credit: Look Unto The East, from Wild & Precious. © Jesse Burke, www.jesseburke.com

Jesse Burke’s photography deals with themes related to vulnerability and identity, as well as humans’ complicated relationship with nature. Daylight Books published his monograph, Wild & Precious, in 2015. He received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, where he is a faculty member. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad and is held in many private and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.  Burke was recently named by Time Magazine as a top 50 US photographer to follow on Instagram and by T: The New York Times Style Magazine as a top 5 to follow on Instagram. Prints of his works can be purchased through Seattle’s Platform gallery. Follow him on Instagram at @jesse_burke.