Reviewed by Diane R. Wiener
Content Warning: Graphic and sexually explicit language
“What are you keeping out of your poems? And why?” asks The Cyborg Jillian Weise, in “A Very Kind Note to Some Poets.” While this is the first poem in the collection, Pills and Jacksonvilles begins in earnest with “Dear Reader,” a vulnerable while unapologetic letter in which the poet offers truths (and potentially irreconcilable paradoxes) to us regarding how sometimes Cy “puts [their own] access first,” while at other times things happen differently. Cy makes transparent that any hope to share poetry so that it is accessible for or to everyone always is perhaps a ruse–or worse:
Access for all became a thorn in my side. Some nights I can’t even make dinner and yet I’m supposed to make poems accessible for all. At what point does making my work accessible transfer the burden onto me? How long should I believe the lie that access for all is entirely possible and incumbent on me? Does this lie presume a nondisabled body? Do I have to choose between the poems I want to write or everyone in the world’s access to the poems I ought to write? How often does the disabled artist stop short of a dream because making it accessible for all is not actually accessible to the artist? And how many nondisabled artists prioritize access while writing? Why do I think the answer is zero? (xx)
When Cy puts their access first, they “call this move, centering the disabled writer’s access before all others,” and refer to “cygo.ergo.nomix, with the dots in it so you know how to say it” (xx). The book therefore begins with candid discomfort and unflinching honesty. As a frequent reader of Cy’s work, I expect nothing less.
As noted in the discussion of BORG.DIEM in this issue of Wordgathering, Cy has written about being a cyborg for over 15 years. In “A Very Kind Note to Some Poets,” Cy asserts that “Being a poet who works with machines is different than being a cyborg.” Cyborgs are discussed in detail in this poem, conjuring even more questions (continuing from the introductory note’s questions, cited above), contrasts, and claims, all of which encourage readers to fathom and face a set of problems, including one that is offered as yet another question: “What is the price of pretending that ‘we are all cyborgs’?” (1). Indeed, the allegedly commonsensical refrain that “everyone is disabled” has caused more erasure than inclusion, arguably.
As the poet states in “About that Last Poem You Read,” “I’m disabled & I’m cyborg & I’m here & I fit.” (31) For all of the years Cy has been writing-creating-teaching-activisting, Cy has not hidden in any way at all their experience of and perspective on the ways in which the academic landscape, and “society” writ large, are ableist, and ableist to the core. Pills and Jacksonvilles is no exception. There are juxtapositions in the collection between intimate conversations and manifest critiques of social formations; sometimes, they co-convene. Cy communicates assertively with, toward, and about well-established poetry festivals, the pharmaceutical industry in specific and the medical-industrial complex in general, former and (perhaps) current lovers, literary figures, confidantes and friends, and dead interlocutors, among others.
“Emo as I Dye My Hair” undid me, in particular—in the best possible way—since I too love Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. After transitioning from having been cast as Aunt March, and/but/while experiencing a deep “want to play / Jo ever after” (and having articulated a fraught connection with another actor, “a straight back”—emphasis in original), the poet-protagonist states, “I’m done, really done, / begging for a role.” In “So Your GF Wants to Come Out as Bi and Polyamorous to her Very Conservative Family,” the girlfriend seemingly won’t be accompanied by any of their lovers to “the exorcism” they are about to endure, as the poet proclaims:
I am writing this
to the later-in-lifequeer women.
You cannot do it
wrong. There’sno wrong way
to do it. Come out
any way you want.Come out alive. (20)
As “So Your GF…” references adult play and accompanying toys, multiple partners, religious dynamics, and survival, so too imagistic cross-cutting occurs elsewhere in the collection between kink, endurance, and refutation. In yet another titular pharmaceutical indexing, “Ambien Poem,” scissoring is contrasted with police abolition and censorship. “Are there Any Lesbians Left in the Garden?” brings conjectured conversations between poets into the present tense of a Walgreens as holiday seasons, shift-work, and closeting re-emerge as themes, ending with the heartbreaking lines: “Are you art first or love first? / I’m art first. The aching part.” (24) “Ambien Poem II” seats us with the poet at tables in famous dyke bars across the past and present, the protagonist writing notes on napkins. “Ambien III” continues with sensuality made explicit yet again while the poet tells the co-protagonist who’s really in charge.
“Masked Intimacy” raises its head in “My Friend Says I Should be Thinking about ‘Masked Intimacy’ When I Think of Leila Olive.” In this poem, the Covid-19 pandemic, the fraught relationship between Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, crip-time, homophobia, ableism, misogyny, and ECT implode together and separately through a time traveling mirror.
The selection of video sonnets toward the collection’s conclusion includes songs, a cast, a party website, and visual illustrations, as well as some contextual notes.
Pills and Jacksonvilles is a haunting celebration, an anti-medicalizing party, and a no-holds-barred invitation to intimacy–at times masked, and always flying in the face of normativity in all of its forms.
Title: Pills and Jacksonvilles
Author: The Cyborg Jillian Weise
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2024
Read a review of BORG.DIEM in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Reviewer
Diane R. Wiener (she/they) became Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering in January 2020. The author of The Golem Verses (Nine Mile Press, 2018), Flashes & Specks (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and The Golem Returns (swallow::tale press, 2022), Diane’s poems also appear in Nine Mile Magazine, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Diagrams Sketched on the Wind, Jason’s Connection, the Kalonopia Collective’s 2021 Disability Pride Anthology, eMerge, For The Birds Arts & Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Diane’s creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Pop the Culture Pill, eMerge, and Beyond Words. Her flash fiction appears in Ordinary Madness; short fiction is published in A Coup of Owls. Diane served as Nine Mile Literary Magazine’s Assistant Editor after being Guest Editor for the Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics. She has published widely on Disability, education, accessibility, equity, and empowerment, among other subjects. A proud Neuroqueer, Mad, Crip, Genderqueer, Ashkenazi Jewish Hylozoist Nerd, Diane is honored to serve in the nonprofit sector. You can visit Diane online at: https://dianerwiener.com.