‘Dark Way Down’ by Lauren Parker

Dark Way Down, a road trip in verse, is a speculative continuation of David Bowie’s album, Station to Station, featuring the iconic David Bowie character, the Thin White Duke. The collection explores gender, addiction, occultism, and toxic queer masculinity through the lens of the Duke’s lesbian daughter, a mixed-up queering of bygone relics and Casanova. From Lauren Parker’s pensive daydreams out of Dodge, the Daughter of the Duke drives a rickety Chevelle from Bel Air to the Mesas of New Mexico seeking the place where her father was last seen.
This is the story of what she found. 

***Available for preorder now!***
Official release date February 4, 2025

US$14 plus shipping

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What People Are Saying…

“Dark Way Down is a fantastical deadhead-dad hangover dream that shoots across the Southwest, a jagged journey of longing, road food, cocaine and booze. If David Bowie only knew. Maybe he does.”
—Jack Bouleware, music journalist, co-founder of Litquake, and author of Gimme Something Better

“All perversity and prayer, with lines like “kisses that sound like creaks of leather” or “I don’t have energy enough to be demon anymore,” Dark Way Down is a poetic road trip that moves from safety to uncertainty and discovery with glee.”
—Tomas Moniz, author of All Friends Are Necessary

“The loss of a generational talent like David Bowie leaves a hole in us, and into that hole falls all our feelings about their work and all the people we felt it with. The only cure, naturally, is more good art. Hold Dark Way Down to the place where you ache.”
—Meg Elison, Locus Award-winning author of Big Girl

“Parker takes us on a cocaine-fueled road trip on the knife edge of an arid dystopia, down back roads so vividly painted you can feel the grind of the dust in your teeth. With David Bowie on the radio, David Bowie in the atmosphere, David Bowie as her co-pilot, Parker pulls us from a heat baked America populated by the desiccated souls of a world gone by, to the stardust sparkle of the cosmos looming above. It’s dark and it’s gritty, and somehow, somehow it’s all about love.”
—Noah Sanders, editor and curator of The Racket

“Dark Way Down is a wolf howling into the unknown, it propels you on an expertly crafted poetic escape, booming rock songs in your ears, red dirt and dust of the mysteries of universe in your fingernails and hair, wild, queer, and deeply moving. This poetry collection made me want to drink again (don’t worry I won’t), it made me miss gin, whiskey, and tequila. Parkers’ poems intimately present you with the seductive way meat can leave bone, the beauty, the pain, and that beauty and pain can taste delicious. This is a must read collection from a rockstar of the Bay Area literary world.”
—Baruch Porras Hernandez, author of Tiny Baruch, I Miss You Delicate and Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle

***Available for preorder now!***
Official release date February 4, 2025

USD$14 plus shipping