The Amputee's Guide to Sex is an authentic exploration of disability and sexuality. Tired of seeing "cripples" appear as asexual characters in all forms of media, Weise took on a subject close to home: her own disability. This does not mean that these poems "happened" to Weise in real life. While based on the experience of an above-the-knee amputee, the poems have a life of their own.

The first section, Translating the Body, draws on the historical context of disability�the masons of the Taj Mahal, the first "deaf and dumb" person granted the right to have sex, and the surgeon responsible for the technique used to cauterize war wounds. By drawing these individuals into a dialogue with personal poems, Translating the Body introduces us to the past and present of physical difference.

Help Your Physician Better Understand Your Pain engages the often overlooked lover to a person who has been in the hospital: her physician. The title poem takes its cue from a medical questionnaire. The Surgeon is a spin-off of an Anne Sexton poem. This section interrupts the book much as a trip to the hospital interrupts one's life.

The final section, Of Holman, employs a consistent masculine counterpart to show the rise and fall of a relationship. While Holman is a flesh-and-blood character, he is also representative of the larger tensions that arise between the abled and disabled.

It is also a book of poems exploring sex, pain, love, grace, redemption, and the absence of redemption. The Amputee's Guide to Sex seeks to answer H.D.'s questions in Notes on Thought and Vision: "What is the body? Where does the body come in?"

Jillian Weise's poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Chelsea, Tin House and others. Her chapbook, Translating the Body, was released by All Nations Press in January 2006. Individual poems have been honored by the Academy of American Poets, the Emily Dickinson Prize Anthology, Pushcart Nominations and Verse Daily. The Center for Book Arts published a broadside of "Portrait of the Author After X-Ray." Weise studied at Florida State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she was the Fred Chappell Fellow. After working at The Paris Review as an Editorial Assistant, she was the Alan Dugan Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which she completed in May 2006. She is now a Fellow at the University of Cinncinati.

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THE AMPUTEE�S GUIDE TO SEX

I. Removal of Prosthetic

Wait for partner to exit room, or initiate their exit by requesting a favor. For example, �Could you check the front door? I can�t remember if I locked it.� Wait for shadows to stand still, then quick, under the covers, remove the prosthetic. Let it slip beneath the bed, under clothes, behind a door.

II. Foreplay

To create an uninhibited environment for your partner, track their hands like game pieces on a board. For leg amputees, keep arms on upper body. For arm amputees, keep arms on lower body. Engage with like limbs. Keep half-limbs out of reach. Your goal is to achieve a false harmony with their body.

III. Sex

Mobility is key. If they see the half-limb then they become inhibited, nervous. They think: �Will it hurt like this? Would she tell me if it did?� Mobility shows confidence. Think for two people. Know where your limbs are at all times; know where your partner�s limbs are at all times.




NOTES ON THE BODY (1)

He says he likes sleeping with me. He sleeps
with metal rods and believes they are human.

In front, he climbs stairs to a bedroom.
My skip-step echoes against his bend-step.

I could never be so lucky � Perfection would be
knowing how to climb a staircase, without

the clank of metal. My seventh year: rubbing
alcohol and iodine; gas mask grape, bubble gum.

He says I think too much. He only wants to lie
beside me naked. When he takes off his clothes,

I see the statue of David.




BELOW WATER

Behind the beach house, I stand
on one leg with club foot dangling,

ribs concealed by a red swimsuit.
We used to strip bare, until I caught

you staring at the railroad tracks
along my spine, and I thought

Mine, mine. Above water, only faces.
Below water, I kick one and a half

legs, pretend to be a mermaid.
I wish we could always be

a horizon of faces, hidden bodies.




WAITING ROOM

I said to myself: three days and you�ll be seven years old.
�Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room

We�re in a waiting room crayoned
and carved: Toby was here 7-12-87.
There is bubble gum under your chair.
Degas� ballerinas with their feet

over their heads. Look what I can
do, they say to a room full of children
with back braces, broken breast plates.
In the corner, a woman knits sweaters.

She is known as Toby�s Mother.
Toby is known as the-kid-with-leukemia.
He will be your roommate in Intensive Care.
He will wake you up, screaming

in the middle of the night and you will wish
he would go ahead and die. The Nelsons,
in the other corner, play chess. They wait
for doctors to explain why their daughter

won�t eat. Every conversation is the same:
Have you taken the tubes out? Is she eating?
How much is she eating? Mrs. Nelson brings
homemade white chocolate chip cookies.

They used to be her daughter�s favorite.
We like the Nelsons because they feed us.
We like them because they remind us that we
still eat, we�re okay.




SLEEP TALK

The grit and grumble of your voice
before waking is a topographer,
a priest after one glass of scotch
or an underwater cameraman.

Even better are the casual clauses
you let slip from half-sleep
Up is no down, says the topographer.
Fire and grimstone, says the priest.
Get that on tape, says the cameraman.
The cameraman fits you best.
In your dream, you wear thick glass
masks and oxygen tanks, breathe
in deep, droning swallows and swim
after barracudas and sharks.

Not long until morning comes
like the squid that flashes electric blue
when aroused.