Jonathan Fletcher

On Watching My Nephew Trying to Save a Downed Sparrow

Perched at the kitchen island,
I did not hear the soft thud.
I did not hear the frantic flapping.
Instead, I heard you calling,
voice cracking from adolescence and alarm.
By the time I arrived,
our visitor was not moving. Its eyes
were wide and flitting,
each dark like mine,
its plumage brown. So, too, me.
Cradling it in a towel,
you gently placed it in a shoebox.
How quickly plumed movements
cease, how quickly cardboard
turns to coffin! As I watched you
clasp your gentle hands,
ask that wings meet wings above,
I almost interlaced my fingers.
I almost said a prayer.

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 and Best of the Net 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.