Poor Claudia published poetry, prose and conversations online and in print from 2009 to 2018.

Maya Weeks

How Person To Be

  • AT IMPASSE WITH WANDERLUST
  • IT WILL BE FINE
  • FROM GAZA TO FERGUSON
  • A CERTAIN LIGHT WILL HAVE TO FALL INTO MY HANDS (Kit Schluter)
  • HAVING NO SENSE OF SCARCITY IN AMERICA
  • IF YOU EVER GO TO THE OCEAN YOU SHOULD BRING MEAT TENDERIZER (Lauren Haldeman)
  • BECAUSE WEATHER REMINDS US WE ARE SUBJECT
  • I SEND YOU VIOLET FLAME ELECTRICAL (Bhanu Kapil)
  • WITH NO ONE LEFT TO READ THE STARS MILLIONS WERE LEFT UNANSWERED (Anthony Cinquepalmi)
  • STORMS MAY NOT BE INCREASING IN FREQUENCY BUT PACIFIC OCEAN WATERS ARE WARMING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

AT IMPASSE WITH WANDERLUST

Lots of feelings on this my last day in California. Having already said goodbye to the beach (“growing up here we have only one definition of beauty”), car packed, books and bags and cast-iron skillet and good things in jars and mattress rolled up across the backseat.

“Is it totally nuts to drive across the Southwest in July alone?”

I am skeptical of driving any desert in summer and rely on

“Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility.” (bell hooks, [Feminism is for Everybody](http://excoradfeminisms.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bell_hooks-%20 feminism_is_for_everybody.pdf))

IT WILL BE FINE

BETTER YET, GREAT

translanguaging global logistics pollution plastics

a certain kind of stamina being built up and exercised a certain support of a certain petroleum industry

Orsaken till åskan är spänningar mellan den varma luft som ligger över Sverige och ett kallare område över Danmark.[1]

Will i find the things i need in Iowa

to “disentangle the body from the straightjacket of the nationally- and state-sanctioned body-politic?” (Erin Manning, Politics of Touch)

[1] Sydsvenskan, 3 augusti 2014.

FROM GAZA TO FERGUSON

currently no more or less susceptible to surveillance than the internet itself (“Oakland's Sudo Mesh Looks to Counter Censorship and Digital Divide With a Mesh Network”, Techpresident, 21 July 2014.)

“No i think the world is pretty safe.”

Japanese people from all ages and walks of life join large protest marches unreported by the media. Entire classes with nose bleeds at the same time

It’s neither here nor there / it’s here and there – total blackberry annihilation

Important mainly because of your interaction with messages in the conversation.

weather or not – there was – was there – a chance at / closeness – i made / mud

A CERTAIN LIGHT WILL HAVE TO FALL INTO MY HANDS (Kit Schluter)

The feminine marker can also serve to express tenderness or sympathy [1]

“I believe that unless we treat each other with tenderness and care now the revolution won’t come” (Francesca Lisette, What I Want: A Manifesto for Revolutionary Tenderness).

Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency [2]

“Vi er mange der ikke kan finde ro. Er evige rastløse. For stillet over for valget om enten/eller vælger mange intet istedet for både/og”.[3]

the adjectives “var” ("existent") and “yok” ("non–existent") are used in many cases where english would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non–existent") [3]

[1] “Amharic language”, Wikipedia.

[2] [“Turkish 101."](http://www.101languages.net/turkish/geography.html

[3] “Jeg ville gerne skrive om Yahya Hassan, men har vi tid?” Zaki Youssef, 8 oktober 2013.

HAVING NO SENSE OF SCARCITY IN AMERICA

i’m so bitter you ought to drink me before dinner

“Logistics, we might say, is war by other means, war by means of trade” (Jasper Bernes, “Logistics, counterlogistics, and the communist prospect”, Endnotes 3).

IF YOU EVER GO TO THE OCEAN YOU SHOULD BRING MEAT TENDERIZER (Lauren Haldeman)

NOÛS SOMMES Jesus crowdsurfing on a bedsheet suspended by angels, intestines uncoiling; an angel wedding a healer by eating his arm over an unidentifiable female body; the pope holding his hand up to his face which is an ass in transparent underwear leading a constellation, all of it in black and white and shades of grey. #joiesauvage #amnésie #éternalretour (Sandra Ghosn, NOUS-SOMMES)

-If you are cutting wood or something, you should be careful. It is at least forty-five minutes to the nearest hospital.[1]

NOÛS SOMMES Jesus crowdsurfing on a bedsheet suspended by angels, intestines uncoiling; an angel wedding a healer by eating his arm over an unidentifiable female body; the pope holding his hand up to his face which is an ass in transparent underwear leading a constellation, all of it in black and white and shades of grey. #joiesauvage #amnésie #éternalretour (Sandra Ghosn, NOUS-SOMMES)

-If you are cutting wood or something, you should be careful. It is at least forty-five minutes to the nearest hospital.[1]

maya_weeks-mustarinda_finland

because you can’t always love somebody
and their work

but i don’t want to
don’t i want to

“i think i will never fall in love”

[1] Antti Majava at [Mustarinda Residency](http://www.mustarinda.fi/en/society/residency, winter 2014.

BECAUSE WEATHER REMINDS US WE ARE SUBJECT

no more boyfriends

“Some people say women don’t get enough job training, but in reality we have the longest and most meticulous training of all. We are being trained to work ‘for love.’” (“If Women Were Paid for All They Do,” from All Work and No Pay: Women, Housework and the Wages Due, Power of Women Collective, 1975).

I SEND YOU VIOLET FLAME ELECTRICAL (Bhanu Kapil)

false intimacy (Brian Whitener, Tarafficker Press)

casual intimacy

my life in santa cruz

the 90s

WITH NO ONE LEFT TO READ THE STARS MILLIONS WERE LEFT UNANSWERED (Anthony Cinquepalmi)

the animal is in the world like water in water (Leslie Scalapino & Kiki Smith, Granary Books, 2010)

STORMS MAY NOT BE INCREASING IN FREQUENCY BUT PACIFIC OCEAN WATERS ARE WARMING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

“i have this idea that weirdness is very important” (Nico Peck, “imagination as activist tool”).

“that weirdness will save the world” (Peck)

because when you’re getting free you’re completely different

Maya Weeks

Maya Weeks is an artist, writer, researcher and activist living and working in Iowa City.