Jon Jon Stefan
Poet and sociology student Jon Jon Stefan serves as a community activist, confronting issues of poverty and systematic injustice. Stefan's upbringing in foreign missions instilled in him a passion for the disadvantaged and an appreciation for diverse cultures. His poetry focuses on the complexities of the human psyche and relationships that impact it. In the same way his activism confronts problems within societal structures, his poetry confronts the emotional and relational structures that affect the mind. His collection of poems, Repatriated, will be featured in the upcoming, Black Diaspora anthology.
GASLEAK
TALKING POINTS
by Jon Jon Stefan
and these people
who are so sick on their own saliva
they talk
and they kiss
and they spit
just to spit!
they don't have to accept
even what they want
gratefulness?
modesty?
these whore-headed con men?
so, who will say thank you?
so, who will say excuse me?
why would I admit ugly?
in my violent beauty?
When I will beat a gas leak
in a chess tournament?
I will step on gravity
until it whimpers under me.
And I will be wonderful
And I WILL live forever
on your hatred and worship.
I will protect us
I will protect us
I won't let another hair fall off your head.
PANIC ATTACK
by Jon Jon Stefan
As if she was guided by the tracers of a ghost
She pulled herself forward
and ducked
under shoulders of linen, cotton, noisy fabrics.
She felt, not clearly,
but strongly,
feet stamping behind.
She heard,
not literally,
whirring voices.
Almost like instruments being tuned
before erupting to an audience.
Squeezing her temples between palms,
the crowd made a track for the chase.
They stared at her.
And they only stared at her,
with the fear and disgust she'd hope
for the assailant.
Yet, she couldn't look at herself.
She was
hardly a thing anymore.
When she screamed,
it ran over her thoughts
like white-out.
Now
there was only city street.
Then
there was a woman on her knees.
and then,
a traffic jam resuming.
CALLOUSED
by Jon Jon Stefan
His brain used to be
like a ball of blisters
pink, bubbling, warm
most of all painful
a stirring
under the hood of his skull.
​
Once he saw
an endless row of houses,
connected
like a nervous system
instead of the busy city,
where you could hear a gunshot
followed by bored silence.
In this,
you were right,
and always respected.
This was the end
of the American dream.
He wakes up.
His brain is now a shell of cracking calluses.
A row of clams
huddled around a cold salty pearl.
He looks down
at the street
and snaps with every twig.
Like a junky without a fix.
He looks over his lawn
picking at a gun
that isn't there.