Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Jonathan Fletcher as our first of six biweekly featured poets of the Spring 2025 issue.
Poems
When Easter Fell on the Same Date as Transgender Day of Visibility
If today there’s crucifixion,
it is in the shape of a bill, more than 500
in number,
each anti-LGBTQ.
If salvation has a color,
it is light blue, pink, and white,
large and high in the air,
carried and waved around.
If there is something risen,
it is the chants and fists,
the markered and bannered hope,
the megaphoned voice
proclaiming good news:
QUEER EXISTENCE
IS RESISTANCE
TRANS RIGHTS
ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
OUR LIVES ARE
NOT DEBATABLE
On Noticing the Residued Outline of a Car’s Decal Sticker
There’s a story there;
I just don’t know which. Did the Christian fish
rub off? Did an apostate hand
peel it away with guilty fingers?
Who is to blame? Or to thank?
Maybe the rain or ice, sleet or snow.
Maybe Hitchens or Harris, Dawkins or Dennett.
Will an ichthys with legs next greet
the car behind, the word EVOLVE inside?
Maybe nothing. Maybe science.
Try as one might, it’s hard to forget
what bumper once professed.
Who can erase the outline of faith?
Growth
Where cells divide
where milk once ran, where areolas crust
and redden, there is
no shame in yielding to a growing multitude.
Who could blame you?
We are many.
For every cell that divides,
I find another reason to fight.
The bigger you get,
the greater my resolve.
May my body
become the battlefield.
Fine! Let them tattoo your chest,
make a spectacle
of the inked areas. In trying to hurt us,
you’ll, too, be harmed.
What is masochism if not that?
What kind of life
is a diminished one?
Life is life,
breast or hair, some or none.
Single-breasted,
other excised, the Amazons fought.
So goes the myth.
Then what is truth? That I’ve a tribe.
We are pink.
To shrink is
not to disappear. Where face emotes,
tissue conceals.
As long as needed,
we’ll hide and wait. Patience is
no mere virtue;
it’s the means to survival.
Vigilance have I learned
in spades. So, too,
appreciating small gifts
like time.
Each little good thing,
I write down.
You’re not the only one
to have grown.
I survive.
I survive.
About “When Easter Fell on the Same Date as Transgender Day of Visibility”
Although “When Easter Fell on the Same Date as Transgender Day of Visibility” addresses an event that happened nearly one year ago, I think the poem still reads timely. Too often, I think, religious traditions (specifically the Judeo-Christian ones) are pitted against the LGBTQ community and their needs, and while I do acknowledge that there are many homophobic/transphobic teachings within the Church, there are also scriptural injunctions to care for the marginalized and disempowered–a category in which the LGBTQ has historically been fallen into–as well as denominations and houses of worship that emphasize as much. Instead of having to choose between religion or the LGBTQ community (which I know many member of the latter feel they have to do), I think it is possible (and maybe even biblical) to integrate both into one’s life. At least that’s what I’ve tried to do in mine.
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, 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.
Contents
Book Excerpt: The Prize of Québec by Jennifer Nelson
“I tend to lean into the transconstitutory powers of ekphrasis. … Only in poetry can one go to the moon in a way that critiques the quest for the moon.” Read a poem from Jennifer Nelson’s new collection from Fence Books, On the Way to the Paintings of Forest Robberies.
Chapbook Poem: This Is How They Teach Us How to Want It . . . by Shanta Lee
“This poem explores the levels of our participation in handing ourselves over, often to the people, places, or things that deserve no such delight.” Read a #poem from Shanta Lee’s new book from Harbor Editions, This Is How They Teach Us How to Want It . . . The Slaughter.
Three Poems by Jonathan Fletcher
“Instead of having to choose between religion or the LGBTQ community (which I know many member of the latter feel they have to do), I think it is possible (and maybe even biblical) to integrate both into one’s life.” Read three original poems from Jonathan Fletcher, along with words from the author.
What Happened? On You are Leaving the American Sector by Rebecca Foust
“Rebecca Foust’s new chapbook of poems has a strange prescience. … Foust isn’t alone in making the obvious connection between Trump’s first term and Orwell’s dystopia.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor Rick Mullin.