"Never Warmer Than with You in Juneau" by Jonathan Fletcher

A little bear crawls across the road,

straightens itself on small hind legs.

From a distance, huddled as one,

we watch in parkas that hug us like fur.

Where there’s a cub,

mama’s never too far away.​

So, too, yours. She’ll be here soon.

Like she gripped mine

when we were young, take my hand, don’t let go.

From your crib,

you’d paw at me. Remember that?

Who could forget?

I watched you crawl. I watched you stand.

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.