Jonathan Fletcher
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 he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Lessons in Origami
If I could’ve folded a father
for us in only nine steps, I would’ve stolen
more colors from Mom’s collection
of kami paper, but all she had left were
yellow sheets, so I creased one in half,
then unfolded it so you could have one side
and I, the other. But my fingers were
not so nimble, and the paper was
cheaper than I’d assumed, and the edges were
not as crisp as I wanted, and the arms did
not align nor the face shape right,
so I crumpled all of my frustrations,
then let my fist turn back into fingers. Out
grew a sunflower.
Or, in my palm, a sun.