This Is My Body
Poems

Jonathan Fletcher (Author)

9780810148253

Paperback / softback, published 15 January 2025

48 pages
17.8 x 12.7 x 14.9 cm, 0.454 kg

"Jonathan Fletcher's poems draw us into the quiet, ordinary spaces--dens, bathtubs, bedrooms--to reveal the resonant and extraordinary transformations that take place within them. Here are poems of blood and dust and buckskin crafted with a tenderness and deep regard for the body's longings and losses. There is no wound or desire that Fletcher's poetry is afraid to touch. And in his exquisitely rendered moments of vulnerability we are awakened to the possibilities of erotic union and of spiritual deliverance."—Deborah Paradez, author of Year of the Dog

Winner of the 2023 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize

This Is My Body readily and unapologetically examines issues of race and ethnicity, ancestry and community, mental illness and recovery, queer sexuality and identity, and the body and disability. Traditionally religious language and hopeful imagery abound; so, too, do their spiritual antagonists: doubt, loss, isolation, and despair. But even in the darkest moments of a troubled inner life, insight and triumph intervene and sometimes even linger. An intimate exploration of the human experience, this debut collection proves itself more than the sum of its interior encounters—however revelatory or transformative any one given experience might be. It is a timely and necessary exercise in faith.