Communion Since COVID
by Jonathan Fletcher
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower
San Antonio, Texas
What is bread without blood?
Or a Peace be with you
without the shake of a hand?
Separated by pews,
masks as common as mantillas,
we feel so distant
from each other as we thirst
for wine
that accompanies wafers
no longer.
At such times, I envy the apostles
their proximity
to the Healer: the way the beloved disciple
leaned against his chest.
The touch of his ungloved hand
to a kneeling leper.
The brush of his white coat-
length tunic against a hemorrhaging woman.
Each made well, the healer
killed. Body wrapped in clean linen,
spiced with myrrh and aloe.
Sealed away in rock
hugged
by thick, cold stone.
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.
