Make me ginger. Not younger. I don’t want to go back. There’s no past. Only
after. And after-after. And after that. I started dying my hair for a play. I was cast
as Aunt March and I convinced another actor—she was eager, naive—to switch
parts. It took some begging with the director. Let me play Jo. At eighteen, I dyed
my hair red. Now, of course, I know why the director cast me as he did.
I have the curve. I lean. What they call scoliosis. Now, of course, I know why
the one I loved before the plague wrote, “I can already see it. Two trees across
a meadow. We don’t speak.” She was a Pisces like that. She had what they call
a straight back. Why think of her now? I’m red again. I want to play Jo hereafter.
But I’m done, I mean really done, with begging for a role.
Pic of The Cyborg Jillian Weise, a white cyborg, in a hotel. The background wall has an Alice in Wonderland effect. It’s a chessboard in vibrant blue squares and light blue squares. Cy’s hair is a short bob, neon blue, a color cy can only get from wigs, and Cy is wearing ‘fake’ eyelashes, but they feel real to her. Cy leans against the wall, head slightly tilted, bit of gloss on cy's lips. She’s looking directly into the camera as if to say, ‘Oh, it’s you again.’ Cy wears a black high collared, many-buttoned shirt she picked up at a Halloween shop since they don't make many clothes for cyborg dominatrices. Do you think Cy’s smiling? Cy is not smiling.
About the Author
The Cyborg Jillian Weise is a poet, video artist and disability rights activist. Cy’s books include The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (2007, 2017), The Colony (2010), The Book of Goodbyes (2013), Cyborg Detective (2019) and a chapbook, Give It to Alfie Tonight (2020), in collaboration with the disabled publisher Red Mare Press. Cy’s recent work appears in POETRY and Hobart. Cy is the director of the video play A Kim Deal Party which features Eileen Myles, A.D. Carson, Patricia Lockwood, Alice Wong, Alex Haagaard, Mistress Snow, and 80 more writers, scholars, artists. The play screened at Public Space One. The trailer is here. Cy’s production company, Borg4Borg, sells snow globe rings on Etsy. Cy's next book, a memoir, will be published by Mariner.