IN WHICH THE HORSE

dreams of ticks again. Lies in bed. Texting her friends. Unsolicited tick pics. How her son made a gun of a stick, a spoon, a penny, a toothbrush. How a book became a megablaster. She remembers drawing him as a child, lying on his belly, drawing himself. How he stopped, got up, and knelt beside her work, considering. Drew an x for a rudimentary sword in the hand she had drawn: his hand. “There.”

Ellen Welcker

Ellen Welcker is the author of Ram Hands (Scablands Books, 2016), The Botanical Garden (Astrophil Press, 2010) and five chapbooks, most recently, “Keep Talking” (Sixth Finch, 2023). She lives in the US midwest and is online at ellenwelcker.com.