“In a world of two, I was one: A Conversation with Jonathan Fletcher about This is My Body”— curated by Tiffany Troy


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.

In Jonathan Fletcher’s  award-winning debut poetry chapbook This is My Body, the speaker explores topics as complex and myriad as asexuality as a queer man, Brownness as a transracial adoptee, and identity outside of a psychiatric diagnosis with clear-eyed vision and precision: “I curled myself, again and gain /into others’ expectations.” At each turn, Fletcher’s speaker defies expectations and rise above his own submission as the beds creaked, and his nightmares multiplied. The reader feels visceral pain as each image shows the internalized racism and the speaker’s yearning: the speaker, called “coconut” as a slur, says: “I even rub its oil into my skin,/ But it never lightens me for good.” I admire how we move through each poem with an additional layer to the multifacetedness of “Jonathan” through his love of his mother and the warmth of childhood sleepovers that lack monsters of lust. Jonathan Fletcher is an exciting new voice, and he deserves his well-earned success as a Brown, queer man who celebrates his body, his skin, his yuck at sex, and his Platonic love for his friends and mother.

Tiffany Troy: You begin This is My Body with “Jonathan.” How does this poem open the door to the collection that is to follow? For me, it grounds the speaker as someone who is an alter ego of the poet, and clearly delineates the poet’s focus on that of the concrete, specific other (the “David”), as well as his ambivalence toward racial and gendered identity. It also speaks to family and boyhood, what was said versus what was thought.

Jonathan Fletcher: Thank you for the question, Tiffany.  And thank you for this interview.  I’m glad you mentioned the opening poem, as the piece wasn’t always the first piece in the chapbook, or even originally titled, “Jonathan” (Its original title was, “Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women”).  With the help of Chris Abani, an amazing Nigerian poet (and judge of last year’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize), I rearranged the pieces around the themes that seemed most apparent in the collection, such as notions of masculinity/queer sexuality, mental health/disability, race/ethnicity, and identity.  There are a couple of reasons why “Jonathan” opens the chapbook.  One, yes, it does ground the speaker as an alter ego of the poet (I remember Mexican American poet and scholar Deborah Paredez talking about such a poetic reality as the collapse of the speaker and the poetry).  However, it also reflects the sense of youth and innocence, which I thought appropriate for the opening (What better place, after all, for this to happen than at the beginning of the collection?) Third, though, “Jonathan” bookends the last poem of the chapbook, “Boys,” another piece that also addresses issues such as notions of masculinity and queer sexuality.  It’s as if everything that happens in between these two poems is in service to these moments of revelation.  Though every other piece included in the chapbook is essential (the absence of any one of them would compromise the intention of the collection), they are, in a way, secondary to “Jonathan” and “Boys.” At least, that’s, to some degree, how I intended those pieces to function.

TT: I could definitely see this, and I love how you bring Chris Abani and Professor Paredez into the conversation. This is actually a great segue into the process: what was your process in putting together this chapbook? Besides who your influences are, I am wondering whether anything surprised you along the way?

JF: Though I wish I could say I compiled the poems with as much as intentionally as I should have, I would be remiss if I claimed that.  To be fair, I did have a sense of the themes I wanted to weave through the chapbook.  However, I did not put as much thought in the organization of the manuscript (Going forward, I definitely will).  That’s where Prof. Abani helped.  Even though the chapbook was accepted mostly as is for the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, he made several suggestions with regard to the organization, as well as edits for individual poems.  He even recommended two poems for inclusion in another manuscript.  Though the decision ultimately resided with me, I took all of his suggestions.  Should I be lucky enough to win another chapbook prize or a prize for a full-length collection, I will probably feel comfortable trusting my instincts regarding which suggestions to take and which ones to disregard.  That said, I was, and am, incredibly grateful for his feedback, as I know not every publisher or press offers suggestions with regard to organization of a chapbook or collection of poetry (at least to the extent that Northwestern University Press did), much less feedback on individual poems.  To be honest, though, I get it.  When a manuscript is accepted for publication, the publisher or press expects it to be mostly there in terms of readiness for publication (To be fair, it should be).  Perhaps, though, that’s precisely why I treasured, and continue to treasure, Prof. Abani’s generosity of self, time, and wisdom.  For that very reason (and beyond winning the contest itself), I count myself lucky, even blessed.

TT:  I definitely resonate with the idea of trusting your own instincts with respect to organization while also paying homage to those whose advice you chose to heed. Turning next to the form of individual poems, did you usually write with a form in mind? Or vice versa? Do you write mostly on paper, on a cellphone, or laptop and do you feel like the writing medium affects how and what you write?

JF: Let me kind of answer your questions in reverse: though I used to not think so, I absolutely believe the medium in which I write affects how and what I write.  In fact, one of the things I’m trying to do is to write more in journals or on paper in general; that way, when I make a “mistake” or compose a line, stanza, or verse paragraph I don’t like, I have to live with it.  Of course, I can scratch out what I wrote, but the proof of the erasure remains.  As if almost operating on the same rationale of exposure therapy, learning to live with whatever “mistakes” I make in writing teaches me to be less intentional about what and how I write, freeing me up to be lead by an image or line instead (Needless to say, I am a very idea-driven writer).  Beyond that, though, writing in a journal or on paper lends a casualness to the experience (as opposed to the formality of a laptop), and I think this is reflected in the contrast between the poetry I’ve written in the latter compared to that composed in the former.  As I mentioned, I’m a very idea-driven writer, and part of my growth has been learning to at least curb such an inclination.  Thanks to Emily Skillings and Shane McCrae (both former professors of mine, the former of whom suggested I try to vary the medium in which I write, the latter of whom identified my writing tendencies and encouraged me to “never start with an idea”), I’ve witnessed more growth and greater literary success.  With regard to form, I sometimes have one in mind, but when I don’t, I just revert to left justification, minimal experimentation with respect to spacing and lineation.  Though I know that can be expected, even borning, I find it easier (safer?) to rely on such traditional conventions when composing a first draft of a poem.  In my revision process is where most of the more interesting choices regarding form happen.  That said, I do a handful of poems (most longform, experimental in lineation and spacing) in which the form determined the content or at least informed the subject matter.  If I am lucky enough to have a full-length collection come out at some point in the future, it will be interesting to compare This Is My Body with it.  Will that make me shudder at my debut? Perhaps, but I think that’s all the more reason to do it.  As Deborah Paredez told my classmates and me during our workshop, it’s not uncommon, maybe even a rite of passage, for writers to look at their older publications with a slight tinge of embarrassment.  I’m sure she’s right.  Maybe that’s a good thing, though.  How else would you gauge literary growth and improvement?

TT: That is so interesting, Jonathan, in large part because I feel This is My Body is very image-driven (“I don’t deserve to be Brown”) (“But I want my Teddy Ruxpin”) and my next question has to do with how you construct this layering of wanting to belong and difference through references to religion, pop culture, and mythos?

JF: To be honest, I wish I knew.  However, I think the need for recognition and inclusion and the sense of difference or awareness or exclusion operate as essentially two sides of the same coin.  Thus, when I layer my poems, I think in terms of how the need to belong can not only drive the acknowledgment of difference and acceptance of self but lead to radical liberation.  Although “Killing Crockett” and “Evolution of an Organism” address different subject matter (racial/ethnic identity, as is the case with the former, and queer sexuality, as in the case with the latter), I think the relationship between the two does precisely that.  While community is important (and is admittedly something I value for having found in spades), I think that without meaningful individuation, a person cannot truly understand their place or role in such an environment, however inviting or supportive the community.  In my poetry at least, that’s how I have approached the seemingly unresolvable dichotomy between the invisibility and exclusion and recognition and acceptance.  I’ll leave it to my readership to judge whether I have been successful in that regard.

TT: I think you’ve been very successful in showing the two sides of sense of difference and awareness through your poems. The individuation too, moved me.

Broadening out a bit, I’ve long admired your poetry and reviews. Can you speak a bit about how your involvement in the literary community has shaped your creative writing?

JF: Oh, absolutely! Though I’ve been involved in the local literary community for many years (most of which has consisted of participation in critique groups), it’s only been recently that I’ve gotten involved in the local Latinx literary community.  For one of the first times in my life I’ve felt truly a member of the Hispanic community.  In fact, one of my poems, “Learning to be Hispanic at the Age of Forty” addresses that very issue.  Though I was born in Lima, I’ve never quite felt Peruvian, as I was adopted when I was one by a white mother.  Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely adore her and am so grateful to her for choosing me.  That said, I’ve felt a disconnect between myself and my racial/ethnic identity.  It wasn’t until I helped build an altar for Día de los Muertos with Viktoria Valenzuela (executive director/managing director of Voices de La Luna for which I currently serve as a board member) that I began to feel connected to my ancestral roots (While the holiday is most closely tied to Mexico, it is also celebrated in Perú, as well as other Latin American countries).  When invited to read at the Poetry Pachanga, a literary celebration organized by Jen Yáñez-Alaniz (a Chicanx poet and doctoral candidate in the Department of Culture, Literary, and Language at the University of Texas at San Antonio), I had only planned to stay for a little bit.  Positively surprised, though, by the extraordinary efforts that obviously went into the event (officiation by United States Representative Joaquin Castro and Texas State State Jose Menendez, musical accompaniment by Tejano singer Patsy Torres), I stayed.  I loved it! Moreover, encouraged by ire’ne lara silva (Chicana feminist poetry and the previous Texas State Poet Laureate), I have become more involved in poetry readings/book releases/signings by local authors, many of whom I count as personal friends.  With my forthcoming chapbook soon to be released (January 15, 2025), I’ve come to realize that I have no right to expect or hope that fellow authors will attend my book release/signings/readings if I don’t reciprocate.  Not that it’s all about me, but I do think that’s helped me become a better literary steward (which, in honesty, is what I think is something for which all writers should strive).  At least I hope that I’ve become one. 

TT: Thank you for sharing that. I (along with the poet friends you’ve forged along the way) am certainly looking forward to your book release! What are you working on that we can look forward to?

JF: At the moment, I am working on a couple of manuscripts (all full-length collections of poetry).  Though I’m also revising a couple of short stories, I’ve put most of my prose on the backburner.  Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, though, I’ll have those short stories ready for submission.  I even have an idea for a novel (much of which would be autobiographical and would incorporate themes of notions of masculinity, queer sexuality, and religion/spirituality).  However, that work is at least several years away from completion.  Lastly, I am working on book reviews, which I have really come to enjoy doing.  With every review I complete, I feel like I have that much greater understanding of the work I’ve reviewed, even if it’s one I’ve read more than once.

TT: Do you have any closing thoughts for your readers of the world?

JF: For my readers, I would assure them that they needn’t worry that they will hurt my feelings.  If any given reader does not like or appreciate my chapbook (or even my work in general), I won’t take it personally.  Do I wish everyone would love and value what I’ve written? Of course, but even the most acclaimed authors have their detractors.  Not every style or subject matters appeals to all readers.  If you love my book and value what it says or how it speaks to you, please tell me.  If you don’t understand it, appreciate it, or like it, don’t hold back.  Though criticism can indeed hurt (I’ve hardly immune to it), I’ve developed a relatively thick skin over the years, most of which I owe to my critique groups but also to editors who’ve provided feedback on work of mine they’ve passed on or to which they responded with personal rejection letters (I also treasure those).  Love my work, hate my work.  Judge it with indifference.  Just please read it.  At least once.  I can ask no greater literary favor than that.

Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]). She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, Assistant Poetry Editor at Asymptote, and Co-Editor of Matter.