by Jonathan Fletcher
Proboscis long as lance,
you pierce brown as layered
as land, extract
what you need for your eggs,
each batched
like ingots of white gold
Drink deeply, savor it.
Tell me how conquistador tastes.
Please drain it all. Tell me
when you’ve enough of me.
The small sting,
I now feel. Hands to fists,
Peruvian to red.
With one swat, I could end the sup.
But no! Enough blood.
Too much already shed.
Make new life from mine.
Hatch
Hatch
fly
fly
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. 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.