The First Nude Female I Saw
Not in Playboy or Hustler,
not in my ex’s bed.
Instead, the colored page
I ripped out from my mother’s issue
of National Geographic:
a young woman
as dark as me, hair also black,
about my build,
around my height.
Naked except for silver bracelets,
a beaded necklace, a belt.
The Amazon for backdrop, splashy
white around her feet.
Emotions bare—surprised,
excited, then as ashamed
as Adam post-apple,
I crumpled the young woman
with guilty hands, hid
her in the bottom of the trash.
Shame on me for throwing her away.
Shame on the shame
taught to me, still clinging tight
as Eve’s figs leaves.
Jonathan Fletcher
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.