Elegy for a Jewish Doctor, His Mostly Christian Patients

for Dr. Sheldon Bernarr Korones (1924-2013)

Smaller than most, not yet baptized,
they reached out to him
with tiny fingers as wrinkly as his own,
as if to bless this short
New Yorker-turned-Southerner—
coated white
like a creator—grateful to his aging hands
for saving their little lives.

For him, their coos and cries
were prayer enough.
For him, real sacrifice was
not what Abraham
would’ve cut, but what a father can cleave
from himself
for the sake of his Isaacs—each also bound,
tiny and tubed, fragile
and warm like an egg, head capped
like an Orthodox Jew,
which he himself was not.

Here, too, in Memphis,
he now lies. Here, too, did Dr. King turn
into a Moses. Here, too,
did the sanitation workers strike.
Here, too, did Dr. K
cradle sickly newborns—most of them
poor and dark,
some light as a pound.

“Why, aren’t you a good Christian,”
would say some of the older ladies around town,
fair as him in complexion,
hairdos high and proud.
Correcting them gently, he, too, hoped
to get to heaven. Only,
though, if they’d be there—
fingers little, cherubic
in face, their light forever
incubator-bright, also waiting patiently

for a Jewish healer to arrive

By: Jonathan Fletcher

Jonathan Fletcher holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in several literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize in 2023, leading to the publication of his debut chapbook, This Is My Body, in 2025. He is currently a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.