August 28~ JONATHAN FLETCHER

Today I'm pleased to shine the spotlight on award-winning poet Jonathan Fletcher. Jonathan hails from San Antonio, Texas, and is currently serving as a Zoeglossia Fellow. Thank you, Jonathan, for sharing your love of words with the SHINE international poetry community!

In bin Laden’s Compound, Porn Was Found

I don’t understand the mind
that praises jihad in a fatwa, then stashes porn
on a hard drive.

Or the pastor of a megachurch
who preaches chastity or sulfur,
then is caught with a prostitute.

Too often, I focus on the speck
in another’s eye.
I question the plank (1) in my own:

What makes something
wrong? Am I hurting someone else?
Is sin the same as harm?

My MacBook open, my email up,
I imagine bin Laden with his laptop,

The Quran beside his bed,
watching videos of young women--
each uncovered, unlike his wives--
dreaming of America afire.

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(1)[an admonition from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount]: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:3-5).

Sick

the term I used to hear as a slur
linguistic descendant of “to be troubled or grieved”
a literary magazine I hope to someday get into
the feeling in my stomach when I hear ableist language
the sense of humor I most appreciate
the condition in which my niece entered this world
slang for amazing, cool, or awesome
the posters we made at the NAMI Conference
my favorite four-letter word

The Last Remaining Inca Rope Bridge

Where the
chasquis (1) once
crossed, step
carefully, Jonathan.
Where others
bow and bless
Pacha Mama, (2)
kneel and offer
up yourself.
Where knots
of ichu grass
thicken into
an umbilical,
grab onto,
grip tight,
as if you could
re-braid the
only connection
to your stranger.
When you meet
her, bridge
the gap between
your lives.
Weave another
one. Let corded
hair as black
as yours brush
against it.
Let dark skin
hug dark skin.
Then let go.
Cross back.
And never again
look for her.

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(1)an official messenger for the Inca empire
(2)[Quechua for “World Mother”] Inca fertility goddess

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which his debut chapbook, This is My Body, was published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

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