ANAÏS DUPLAN

Three Cheers for All the Babies Born Under the George Washington Bridge

I liked it. We had a good time. We got / fucked up. I liked it. I had a good / dream. I got fucked up / the dream-hole. What an endless / orifice. Will you tell me a story / tell it dirty like once upon a time / I fell down the stairs and hurt my collarbone. That's why / I point to it like Amélie and hope / you've seen the movie. You've seen / the movie where everyone dies / trying to climb to the top / of a waterfall. They didn't need / to climb it and I've never seen / the movie but I assume they all / just wanted answers. A toddler on the express / train put a note in my hand, it said / never to turn my back on a man / with a gun but I still haven't figured out / how else to stay alive, here. Here. 

WHY WOULD YOU EVER GO TO A POOL PARTY ANYWAY

I.

Anaïs, you needn't cry
like a baby seal. You needn't wear
your hair long, just to divert
the passing sailors –

           O what flag waves outside the windows
of all fledgling girls
when they detect

what lives

between their legs. John Paul once said to me,
O Anaïs, o Anaïs, what lives between your legs,
& I OPENED UP TO HIM, PUT HIS HAND INSIDE ME
& SAID: "This is the fiery throat of God – be careful.

You may find you are no longer
everything you had been
before you arrived."

II.

He said, she said, we wrote of a great awakening.

Instead of death we only moaned
every time the sun did wane and how
it waned every morning. Today could be
the day that does not end
in your death-
ly embrace. 

I FELT LIKE A TRAFFIC LIGHT AS SOON AS I GOT INSIDE YOU

I.

This is how to be honest.
I learned it on the subway: look
me in the eyes and tell me
I'm not beautiful. Sometimes
it's best just to drop out tune down
let go so ever so deep. So deep
was her throat and how the gods
did sing, how the dog doth sing,
"Happy birthday, darling. And thank you, too."

II.

I met a girl named Martha
with eyes as big as Arizona,
relative to other states.

Martha, I promise to change
your bandages forever 'n' ever,
and if the doctors should ever say,

O Anaïs, Martha will not survive
without your limbs, I would
tear them off one-by-one.

III.

Lift me up –
I am looking at the neighbor's wife,
I am looking at the neighbor's wife

and wond’ring where she buys her things.
Lower me down, just below your eye-
level and tell me about the time

your mother made you wear clothes you didn't want to wear.

IV.

Never forget to greet the doctor in the room.
I know it was your birthday but I never got
the prescription you wrote me.

Dancing is not permitted in certain towns and that's ok
for some. Don't stop get it get it get it get it get it get it
before it gets you.

As soon as you walked into the room
all the flowers said o hell yes.

V.

My life is a ballad, it goes:
"O oo ooo oo o!" I can't breathe
when you hold me so cold.

Get paid get paid tomorrow.
Wake up get paid tomorrow.
You deserve everything you get.

You don't know nothing and you never did, silly bill.
I don't have a gun but maybe one day I will.

Anaïs Duplan's poems and essays have appeared in publications such as Hyperallergic, [PANK], Birdfeast, Phantom Limb, amongst others. She is a staff music writer for Decoder Magazine and No Fear of Pop, as well as an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Lastly, she is the head curator at The Spacesuits, an ongoing initiative to create multimedia works on the ethnofuture.