Joni Flint-Gonzales
Anti-Repression Poem
If a cop knocks on your door and asks to
Talk, don’t say shit. You do not need to speak
To cops and you shouldn’t. If the cop says
That he has a warrant, stay calm. Open
The door and step onto the sidewalk. Close
The door behind you and lock it gently.
If you let them arrest you, they might not
Search your home. Invoke your right to silence.
Say “I would like to speak with a lawyer.”
Fear is normal. Forces of repression
Are vast. You need to fight them. When it comes
To weapons, they have nearly everything.
Look at who you are fighting for and with:
Having everything is not everything.
Shorter Aufheben Theory
When I die, pour my ashes
Into brick, along with my loves
The dead, so that I may find
The living, and be hurled
Through glass, at police,
Death in life, my body gone
But still in love and motion, like
A king’s two bodies
For the 21st century. This is
My wish. To make it hurt.
Do not share my “oeuvre.”
Do not say “Her body of thought.”
Say she loved music, hated cops, and
Then throw me, hard.
Freud Made Sing
Daniel said “devastation.” I turned my gaze as if in address. In the years I've wasted, where was the I? An agent of fluxus? Meaning, if waste, the conclusion of a fuel? Raw materials typical in peripheral zones, I recall. However we were at home. You assessed the court of my face and said "Place here." At times aggression. When I imagine myself lying fallow, you are in a room. I am too. Light poured in and described the rooms. You were upright. Ergot, on flowering grass or cereal. Maybe therein lies power. The spore proliferates and destroys the ovary. I refused life. I looked away. Which implicated. An arc of accumulation hung over. Us in its penumbra. I thought you unfit. It's devastating and denial of words. An aborted port closure. Brecht dwelling on the wheat exchange. It came after he wrote porn, naturally. I didn't want to be biting. You were in a room without remark. Unlike a river. Our gravitational fence. We play a game where we imagine who does worse after the other dies. Tossing around the wooden brain that Freud made sing. We were crawling the internet like babies. The drives, I, and they. They all gave up. Giving a form and a force. Of mothers who are good enough. The good-enough inevitably became the mother. "You are all my sons." Pleasant in the transbay motion. I thought crossing over a cure. Had hoped my liberation would liberate you. The chance, still turning over, like a load of laundry. Still turning, not over.
Joni is a communist and writer born and raised in Central Ohio. She lives in Oakland, CA. In 2023, she self-published a chapbook of poems written in Venmo transactions. She has never been to Israel, but looks forward to visiting when it's Palestine.