Along the Road Everyone Must Travel

Along the Road Everyone Must Travel was selected by Hoa Nguyen as the winner of the 2023 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Set in the topsoil above the underworld, at the foot of empire, Pafunda's tenth book of poems takes place during a spring super-bloom, a colony collapse, an end-time. It's a lanky, muscular meditation on belonging--as both property and beloved. Pacing the road from desert to sea, unraveling gender from violence from capital, asking what happens when we finally refuse to dog eat dog our way through, this queer surrealist epic leaps from the Homeric hymns to post-punk lyrics, holding its tender friends, calling out its loves to play, slick with sex, illness, loss, and wonder.