Dark Way Down

In this poetry collection, Parker plumbs personal depths via a David Bowie–inspired alter ego.

Of all Bowie’s personas, none is as enigmatic as the Thin White Duke, the drug-fueled, quasi-fascist character at the center of his landmark album Station to Station. In the Duke, poet Parker discovered an unexpected kindred spirit in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. “In the endless stretch of lockdown,” writes Parker, “I was on a mental journey through the desert, rambling down the highway,” listening to Bowie’s music and imagining “a lesbian daughter” for the Duke. This daughter rides across the American Southwest in a 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle, wearing her father’s suit, speeding along the highways from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Phoenix and the anonymous spots in between. “Drive like a demon, I was the afterthought of a / Man’s darkest days,” the daughter narrates ruefully, “soaked in cocaine & streetlight / More of my DNA is daddy reaching out to Mars / Than reaching to the stars within.” These 28 poems track her netherworld journey through Bel Air mansions and roadside dives, gas stations and movie drive-ins, landscapes haunted by her longing for absent lovers and echoes of Bowie lyrics. Parker writes like a radio slipping between stations; the daughter’s internal and external worlds mingle to form psycho-chemical dreamscapes. “Do you understand the initial wobble / Of thick white lines, cut thinner / Cut disappearing / Fade & fade & fade to gossamer?” she asks, blending images of cocaine and highway lane paint. Hers is a fragmentary grammar of Germanic runes and diner hashbrowns, cigarettes and succulents, less a travelog than a map of loss and listlessness. Indeed, in weaker moments, the poems read like lyrics divorced from necessary driving melodies: “Slick back your hair to keep your head on / Fit your trousers so you can’t run away / Keep the vest tight to keep the psychosis at bay.” Fans who have searched for hidden meanings in Bowie’s lyrics will likely love this desert ride with the Duke’s daughter.

A desolate, intimate homage to one of rock’s most original lyricists.