May 5, 2024

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Long before the Gun, Buffalo Threw Themselves off Cliffs

By Jonathan Fletcher

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Long before the Gun, Buffalo Threw Themselves off Cliffs

By Jonathan Fletcher

With tips of spears behind you, 

arrows grazing 

your sides, tearing 

off dark tufts of fur, 

who could blame you for jumping? 

An ancient people thank you.

Me, I don’t have hooves.

No one hunts me in order to live.

My death would bring

no meat or bones.

No tribe 

would bless my spirit.

There are so many of you.

I’m a herd of one.

Instead of throwing myself off,

I’ve chosen to climb a cliff.

The frightened creature I used to be,

trample, trample

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. 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. He is a 2023 Zoeglossia fellow.

Image description: A close up photo of a man wearing glasses with a city in the background.

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