Jonathan Fletcher
Though light brown like you,
no logo graced my body.
Though larger than you,
I felt smaller on the field.
No one chased after me,
tackled others to get me in their embrace.
No one tossed me toward grasping fingers,
hurled their bodies for my sake.
What’s it like to go far and high?
What’s it like to fly through a goal post?
What’s it like to be cradled like gold?
What’s it like to be passed about?
I knew only one kind of passing:
passed up during run drills,
passed over during team pick,
passed the ball never once.
AUTHOR BIO
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 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.
Football
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