Picking Scabs from the Body History

by Joanne Godley

Scheduled Release Date: July 15, 2020

From the opening scene in a child’s library through historical and personal locations that remind, inform, and gut punch with stark imagery and pared-down language, Joanne Godley’s Picking Scabs from the Body History tracks the movement of racialized bodies through American history. A fiercely attuned chronicle of the violence and collective trauma of these United States, its “indelible truths” enact corporeality and rage through the thrum of rhythm and repetition and the lush compounding of sounds. It digs down, mapping through language the “surly root formations” of our very foundation. Through these poems we are shown back to ourselves and beseeched to “erase the disaster that has been America” to “run run fly while there is time still.” A masterful chapbook and absolute necessary read.

—Elizabeth J. Colen, author of What Weaponry and The Green Condition

For complete details, reviews and ordering information click here.