Jillian Weise Poems

The body that used to
contain your daughter

we found it
behind the fence

It was in a red coat
It was collected

Is she saved
Is she in the system

You're lucky
we have other bodies

to put your daughter in
Come on down

to the station
...

I want to be disability for you.
Make new signs for you.
They are saying things about us

online in their underwear.
The listserv is blowing up.
Ableist verse, ableist verse

and I'm talking to you.
I'm a green circle for you
and there you go again

into my cover letters.
Pinned your last dispatch
to my Outlook so every day

starts with you. Got your text.
Got your chat. Got your tweet.
Got you all over me.

I want to be disability for you
and capital crawl for you
and accommodate you.
...

It's not fair. You owe it to the reader.
We're trying to help. We have an uncle
with a disability and he always says

exactly what it is. Take it from him.
Take it from us. Take it from them.
You can't expect people to read you

if you don't come out and say it.
Everyone knows the default mode
of a poem is ten fingers, ten toes

with sight and hearing and balance.
When this is not true, it is incumbent
on you to come out and say it.

Here's what. We'll rope you
to the podium and ask
What do you have? What is it?
...

Right to property
Right to protect property
Encrypt everything
Make private
I am so right and if I'm not
I'm gonna burn yr FB wall down
Be something for sale
Be a strategy
Last fall was tough on us
Ask after me
Ask after me again
Small business owners
Big pharma
There are said to be 7000
bodies buried under
that university
If we write, it's identity
If they write, it's Reflections
on American Legacy
The ADA
Those aren't just letters
Punk a bunch of coffins
...

We were stepping out of a reading
in October, the first cold night,
and we were following this couple,
were they at the reading? and because
we were lost, I called out to them,
"Are you going to the after party?"
The woman laughed and said no
and the man kept walking, and she
was holding his hand like I hold yours,
though not exactly, she did not
need him for balance. Then what
got into me? I said, "How long
have you been married?" and she said
"Almost 30 years" and because
we were walking in public, no secret,
tell everyone now it's official,
I said, "How's marriage?" The man
kept walking. The woman said,
"It gets better but then it gets different."
The man kept walking.
...

At home, a sixteen-year-old son
and window treatments and walls
to paint and "How was your day?"
On the web there are no days
and no seasons and no oil changes
for the Subaru. "No one important."
At the motel, flat pillows, a lamp
tall as his son in the corner and
a print of a sailboat. "In year three,
the sex fizzled and we broke up.
Then we got married." Have you gotten
yourself into something? "Tonight
I am making your favorite dish."
News comes on, news goes off, taxes.
"At some point, he stopped kissing me
on the neck." She needs to write
her Goals Statement. "He promised."
More or less. "How can I live like this?"
the three of them in unison.
...

begin long before you hear them
and gain speed and come out of
the same place as other words.
They should have their own
place to come from, the elbow
perhaps, since elbows look
funny and never weep. Why
are you proud of me? I said
goodbye to you forty times.
I see your point. That is
an achievement unto itself.
My mom wants me to write
a goodbye poem. It should fit
inside a card and use the phrase,
"You are one powerful lady."
There is nothing powerful
about me though you might
think so from the way I spit.
I don't want to say goodbye
to you anymore. I heard
the first wave was an accident.
It happened in the Cave
of the Hands in Santa Cruz.
The four of them were drinking
and someone killed
a wild boar and someone else
said, "Hey look, I put my hand
in it. Saying goodbye is like that.
You put your hand in it and then
you take your hand back.
...

On the highway
600 miles from home

in a downpour
I said - what?

You want to get married?
We could die here

for lack of light
for fog

or because somebody
veers into our lane.
...

You need to know the word perineum
so that you do not accidentally use it
when you mean proscenium.

You need to know the location
of your keys in case of an emergency.
You need to know Hebrew

and then teach it to me. You need
to know that I have been reading
your mind and I don't know who

Colleen is, but maybe tell her
that she really hurt your feelings.
Whatever you do, whatever

she does, whatever comes of us,
just remember to keep eating.
...