The first time I slipped between Tuesday
and Wednesday, into a Twasday,
I saw Amy. She was wearing her tattoos again.
I had not seen her in years. She asked me
to help her build a casket. She had the hammer
and nails. The saw was lying on the ground
next to a plank of salvaged wood and a diagram.
She got down there on her hands and knees.
“We just follow the directions,” she said.
The diagram made it look easier than
all the divorces from Ikea. “Will you help me?”
she said. I felt happy but I did not want
Amy to know it. I became afraid that I would
go the way of outer space or that Amy
would impregnate someone. “No,” I said.
“I’m not building any caskets with you.”
Later I saw Amy in another Twasday.
“Hey,” she said. “How are you dying?”
SEE MORE: Interview with Jillian Weise
THE CYBORG JILLIAN WEISE is a poet, video artist, and disability rights activist. Cy’s first book, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was reissued in a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface. The Book of Goodbyes won the 2013 Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2013 Gardner Award from BOA Editions. Cy’s speculative novel, The Colony, features Charles Darwin, James Watson, and Peter Singer. Cy’s fourth book, Cyborg Detective, won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Essays have appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Tin House, and other places. Cy has been awarded residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Fulbright Program, and the Lannan Foundation. Cy worked in editorial at The Paris Review and The Iowa Review. In Fall 2020, Cy worked with disabled publisher Red Mare/Su Zi. They collaborated on the sold-out textual art chapbook Give It to Alfie Tonight. Cy’s memoir, Common Cyborg, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
