A Poet's First Time at a Shooting Range

Dragged here by my friend,
I see nothing poetic. I hear nothing poetic.
Just crack and zing and boom.
Crack and zing and boom.
In the booth next to us,
a big guy shoots an AK-47.
In my hands, I hold a rifle.
I sit atop a stool. The same thumb
that rests on the stock
supports the shaft of a pencil. The same finger
that pulls the trigger
guides the direction of the lead.
Try as I might,
I can’t help but imagine
metaphor crammed into the clip, meter in the barrel.
I aim and shoot
at a sheet of paper, fill the page tearfully
with bullet holes.

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 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.