Paperback, 230pp

Nightboat Books, New York, 2025

Marcus Clayton is a multigenre Afrolatino writer from South Gate, CA, with an M.F.A. in Poetry from CSU Long Beach. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature …

On the frontlines, in the pit, at the community college, on stage, across the border, off the grid, and against the cops, ¡PÓNK! slams and wails with you. This book is punk as Prince and Anzaldúa, punk as dandelions and dreadlocks. Marcus Clayton redacts, shapeshifts, and testifies about music, race, education, labor, identity, and love. Get ready for the feedback: “Cacophonous. / Ours. / We fly.”

¡PÓNK! follows Moose, an alienated academic and lead guitarist for Pipebomb!, as he navigates through spaces in and out of South East Los Angeles: punk clubs, college classrooms, family gatherings, street protests, and euphoric backyard shows. Oscillating between autofiction, memoir, and lyric, Clayton blurs genres while articulating the layered effects of racism, trauma, immigration, policing, Black hair, performance, and toxic academic language to uncover how one truly becomes an “ally.” Borrowing from the spatial lyricism of Claudia Rankine, the genre-bending storytelling of Alexander Chee, and the racial musings of James Baldwin, ¡PÓNK!’s narrative takes back punk rock and finds safe space in the mosh pit.