Jon the Martyr
Dan Foster


____High School gave us three-stories of brick-walled
Salvation, saturated with pupils and masters atop
A green belly of a hill. It looked invincible—
A massive brown chest of mortar and marble spreading
Its Golden Rule up and out into columned wings.
There was even a cupola for our clock-tower,
But none of us knew what that meant.
In the mornings we frosh would mass
Like pubescent locusts, buzzing and fluttering
Our way into its mouth. As the bells jarred and
We breathed the clapped chalk dust, some sat erect
In their molded desks, already fresh and antsy
With thoughts of Ivy Leagues and Blue Chips;
Some were born knowing but others would die
Searching…these mostly shuffled from box to box,
Niche to niche, clique to clique, unaware of what
They didn’t know and inescapably frumpy in their
Skins. And in the vast gray between were the
Stereotypes. They wore their masks and spoke their
Tongues and never much exerted themselves, resigned
To the almost not-unpleasant inevitability
That they would one day be issued sedans and three-
Bedroom ranches on quarter acre lots. But none of us
was ready for Jon. He shrieked silence until
The void was hoarse and penned his mantras
So hard into his forearms that they dug out
Flesh and nerve and vein, until pain became
Indistinguishable from pulse. We heard no Jon,
We spoke no Jon and so we saw no Jon. But Oh,
Christ, did Jon see us.

…At night when the cupola tolled queer hours
And _____ HS sat back on its haunches like a sphinx,
Jon gave himself to numbness and drifted to Littleton—
And to Waco and to Golgatha for that matter—
And plotted his revenge.