Anaïs Duplan

from Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus

At the school dances, black and white girls shook on the floor.
A crowd of trees formed around them. There was a countdown
to the day when everyone would be shot. The administration said
it was all right not to go to school that day so everyone hung
out with friends. I talked to Sam about it. He thought we
should’ve been there with the lockers, the classrooms, the desks,
in the thick of it. With the guns and the youth, even if they were just ideas—
not a present body, not to-day—in the tick of things. It wasn’t my day.
I am speaking to you plainly now. Not from beyond the grave.

ANAÏS DUPLAN was born in Jacmel, Haiti. He earned his BA from Bennington College and his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of a full-length collection of poems, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press) and a forthcoming chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press). He is the founding curator at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for new media artists of color in Iowa City.