THE BOOK OF SCAB

ISBN 9781938900266
Publication date: March 2019
98 pages, 5.3” x 7″
Read Press Release (PDF)

EXCERPT

Dear Mom and Dad,

I won’t be home tonight. At the concert we ate a bag of soap powder that we bought for twenty-five ripped up sweaty dollars, and swallowed someting a girl said was Tylenol and Eurydice.

There’s a boy here who’s been calling me Sister. He wants to know where True Love is, he wants me to follow him through the park, to leave some money in the base of a tree True Love often pisses on, to hold my hand and sit on the edge of the fountain until True Love comes back from the grave. He says that True Love is a beautiful man with twelve apostles who want us all to wash our feet before we come to the table he says that True Love takes his pants off and has babies all over the bathroom floor he says that True Love always knew I was a bitchcuntwhoreslut but he still wanted to feed me he says he says that True Love has a generous nature and will give us all plenty of time to please him before he sends us out to hustle for rent. He wishes I could’ve known True Love when he was alive he says True Love is coming back after the third set he says True Love comes on wings of a guitar solo with a leather broom handle in his teeth riding a horse’s skeleton.

I sit with that boy as long as I can and then, dying of boredom, tell him to wait for me there.

PRAISE

Intense, poetic and lyrical, Danielle Pafunda’s The Book of Scab absorbs and expunges young female experience. Like her contemporaries Joni Murphy and Rachel Nagelberg, Pafunda posits a Young Girl who, despite her restrictions, sees, feels and knows all. Pafunda’s work is a powerful force.

– Chris Kraus, I Love Dick

AUTHOR

Danielle Pafunda is the author of nine books of poetry and prose. She has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of California San Diego, and University of Maine.  She has served on the board of directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, holds an MFA from New School University and a PhD from the University of Georgia, and can often be found in the Mojave Desert.

DESIGNER & ARTIST

Book design by Betsy Medvedovsky.

Cover illustration by Bekah Fly.