ABC's — pet murmur

A is for Adam

We sucked happily the fruits

of our knowledge on the Garden

State Parkway past midnight.

I showed him the waning phase of the moon

and he told me why lightning snakes

violent to kiss the horizon. His presence

was thundering close to my skin,

but his hand never reached out for mine.

I may not have been first girl

to walk through this world,

but there were three men

with me in that car:

Adam, the Devil, and God.

"A is for Adam"

B is for Burkan

When I said, Leave me alone!

and hung up the phone, I didn’t mean it.

You should know better. Nobody wants to be

left in a room, alone with her thoughts.

Don’t you know the story? Once upon a time,

a pretty girl was spurned. Her beloved left her

for another. She woke up the next morning

a grown woman who would never be a bride.

She felt so meanly betrayed, she grew green

wings and flew through the suburbs, rapping

curses on the windows of the yellow nurseries.

Thus wars begin in times of peace.

We cannot live happily together

because love is strife, and we live to fight

each struggling to gain the upper plane.

Rage is singular, plural and a verb.

We roll over and over each other

on the bedrock and carpets of mosses,

defiling the emptiness of spaces.

Prayer is the loveliest daughter of God,

but ours is the intimacy that occurs

between warriors. We love and murder

relentlessly in groves of sacred trees.

You are perfect and stupid. I am violent,

erotic. I long to be plundered, but at night

I embrace nothing: your phantom,

my dreams, shadows of what I have foreseen.

Our love will assume the form of a boy.

Our son will weep for spilled blood and for love.

But I awake every morning, knowing—

My foresight is fiction.

The truth is—

C is for Charlie

Charlie wrote a note

in my book:

“You write

Dickinson." This

did not flatter me,

but I did take it

to be prophecy.

For years, I kept

a nest of his hair.

Pet Murmur | by Christine Gardiner

D is for David

Do you remember who we were

when we were young? Both so sincere

in our misanthropy, the day that we met we agreed

we would rather not know each other.

Then I got drunk and collapsed on the grass

of the consulate, you practically carried me home.

Those were hot days. You read in the sun.

I smoked on the balcony. We drank strong

coffee and told each other long stories.

There were witches on the cliffs where

armed sentinels guarded the night.

X marks the spot. Our paths intersected

and we walked a year's distance together.

We rode the slow sugar-train and the ferry,

crossed the forbidden border in the bed of a truck—

traveling from one ruined city to another,

lodging in small, airless rooms.

It was intimate the way we lay

together, never touching our limbs.

"D is for David"

E is for Ed

1.

When Ed pulled up in his rust-colored trailer,

I ran out to meet him. He was the nice old man

who cut the grass. I loved him and sat

on his lap until one late summer afternoon,

I saw the serpent pressed to the thigh,

leering past the edge of his shorts.

I can still see the impassive

planes of his face and smell the smell

of cut grass cut with sweat.

Nothing much happened except

I learned something else I didn't want to know

and backed away into the house.

I told my mother I didn’t like him, but

she didn’t listen, and he kept coming back.

For years, I hid under a window upstairs

as he circled the house on his chopper.

He’s dead now. He took his own life.

I don't know how I heard

that in his suicide note he wrote

that he wished he had never

been born, but I understood why

he wished for oblivion.

Whatever he did, I forgive him.

2.

On the playing field, Ed ripped up the grass and ate it.

In gym, he banged his fists against the painted bricks.

When he spoke to me, I listened

because he did not seem to want to be alive

and I could relate to his desire to die.

When he spoke to me, I listened until

one day he told me the name

of a girl he had forcibly defiled.

I regret. This is not

the only secret I have kept.

3.

I picked his name from a shortlist

of psychotherapists that worked

with my university insurance.

Ed was a kind, listening man

in a still little room, filled

with white noise. For two years,

I confided in him about Seckin,

my father, Burkan. Of course,

this was before I met a storefront

gypsy, who showed me through mystic

and irrefutable proofs that everything

has meaning and happens for a reason.

Back then, I just thought

What’s in a name?

F is for Fred

Big bones. Big nose.

Best freckles on the school bus.

For six days in the sixth grade

I loved him.

G is for Greg

My mother was school teacher

but she never taught me much

about boys. She insisted I would marry

in the church and otherwise left me

to my own broken devices.

Now, studies have shown that little girls grow up

to go for men who take after their fathers, so

of course, I fell for the first charming thief

that I met on the street. I was tired

of running my lines and wearing disguises.

Greg was unrepentant, defiant, a runaway

from a boarding reform school in Georgia.

He looked like home to me—a pair of designer

blue jeans, turned inside-out to reveal

their dirty inseams. He pulled a pill

from his pocket. I swallowed. It helped me

forget. I petted his head, and he followed me

home to my dormitory. He was the first boy

that slept in my bed. He gave me a moonstone

and read to me from an illuminated book of poems

that he stole. I cut class that semester,

and Greg schooled me in everything:

how to mark your territory, how the art

of deception depends on consent.

He was always working an angle: his voice

stretched thin and fine, his face

inclined further and further away

as I leaned in to kiss him.

Yes, he was using me, but I too was generous

with my cruelty. I once struck his cheek

with the flat of my palm because

I did not like what I saw in his eyes:

a wild animal, in the cage of my arms.

He went out one night and he never came back.

A thread of his hair still on the pillow. His shoes

in the back of the closet. I locked myself up

with the smell of his things and didn’t come out

until I could blow perfect smoke rings.

The year after Greg disappeared into the ether

I kept a smart alley cat called Sebastian

in a college apartment with a school boy

named Adam. When the cat ran away,

Adam was saddened, but I had expected it.

I may have failed Intro to Critical Theory

but I had learned this lesson already:

the more human an animal, the less

she will deign to be kept as a pet.

H is for Harris

My forehead was an oiled rose. Everyone

was thinner and had better skin. You were quick

as a whip with physics and math but never could

see the big picture. I was slower at school because

I've known too much since the day I was born.

So you did the homework, and I copied yours.

Then you accused me of cheating, and I failed

that test of human decency.

It's like we were playing

a game, only we weren’t on the same team,

though we were both teenage children

who would grow until we stopped growing,

then spin out our mortal days, waiting

to die like house cats and horseflies.

In the meantime, we all do what we must

to survive. Even the rich are given to death,

but it was you who taught me that in life

you only get what you pay for.

Consider love, the price of cut lilies, the cost

of living in a hidden city on a hill.

I is for Ivan

August at the racetrack is ostensibly

about the hot flanks of stallions chasing

wild fillies around the human desire

to get something for nothing.

Ivan watched me race

back and forth to the finish line,

balancing cocktails on a tray to serve

the richest men in the world.

In his country, he had been educated

to engineer tall buildings. In this country,

he exercised horses and worked in the kitchen.

He saw me for what I was: a pretty bad girl.

After dark we met for a drink in a dark-

paneled bar. We spoke in his tongue about

his woman and son. Then he put his mouth

on my mouth, and I pushed him away.

At night, I drowned in the moonlight of youth.

In the morning, I returned to the throng.

Old men slapped my ass and pinned me

to the wall, while the bugle blew nine times a day.

The horses ran laps as I eyed

blood diamonds and licked

coins from the floorboards, learning

one by one the old superstitions:

Never bet for or against a red mare.

J is for Justin

For years I’ve been meaning to tell you—

that midnight in the parking lot

on Meeting Street—when you asked me

to spend the night with you, I hesitated

because it was a question I had never considered

and because at the time I was a virgin but

I wasn’t a virgin, so I led you to the front bedroom

with fake lace on the window and wrestled

with the question until

we finally accomplished the act.

When I told you that I looked at the world

through a series of dim window panes

and flat screen TVs—and you gave me another hour

of comfort—I was trying to tell you

I was a virgin but I wasn't a virgin.

A virgin who smoked and played

cards and spat like a sailor.

The Virgin Night-Walker.

The Virgin of Copper Hood Ornaments.

A daughter of darkness with a harem

of young handsome men and a smart alley cat

who disemboweled crows as a token of love.

I was a virgin but I wasn't

a virgin. A virgin like Mary

of Sorrows, pierced through the heart

with the seven sharp swords of her suffering.

Fierce as the virgin of the hunt or

the gray-eyed virgin of warfare

and wisdom, who emerged like a fully-formed thought

from the cracked skull of her father. I was a virgin

and I wasn’t a virgin. Locked in my flesh like an animal.

Angry as a gargoyle on the roof of a church.

K is for Kamran

Kamran was my first boyfriend. We met

on a Halloween hayride. I liked the way

he saw me in the dark light of the bonfire:

little good-girl-rebel-vegetarian.

So I told a white lie of intention and spent

a decade trying to be what he saw in me.

But alone in the dark refrigerated glow

I still hungered for flesh sucked off the bone.

Kamran was kind to me whenever we spoke

on the phone. He once warmed my frozen

shoulders in the gymnasium and lived

in a mansion with tall walls painted the color

of jewels. The one time I went to his house,

he watched from the stairs as an ugly confrontation

played out between me and my mother.

I didn't talk to him again after that,

but each time we passed in the hall

I looked beautiful, ugly and cruel.

L is for Luis

I will never forget

the places we went

to be alone together.

Along the seawall, through

the bones of old homes

to the lemon tree balcony,

where you knelt at my feet

as I leaned against concrete,

breathing on the sky.

You were engaged

to a rich girl in another country

but I didn't care

because at the turn

of the 21st century,

it was always hot

in the city of Havana,

where the guava hung

ripe from the tree, and

you tasted like cigarettes,

chocolate and salt, when

you kissed me like lightning

kissing the dark sea—

waters, washing below

the edge of our knowledge.

M is for Emmanuel Jenkins

I don't remember where we were

going but we had crossed

over the Point St. Bridge

and were driving through

the South Side of

a medium, liberal

New English city.

It was a blinding

white weekday—

summer—but not yet

the 4th of July.

I was driving.

He was riding shotgun.

We were arguing over nothing—

a song on the radio—and had come

to a regular intersection when

a gunshot broke open the daylight.

The ancient alarm, winnowing

red epileptic blue lights.

The pointed movements

of a uniformed man with a gun

pointed at a man in a car.

This is America. The car was

a common make and model.

The men fit the standard descriptions.

I felt the thunder of gunfire

and then like slow-motion granular

video, the car door was open &

You were down on the ground.

I didn’t know which way to turn.

Part of me wanted to jump

out of the car and yell, "Stop!"

but I was afraid.

I almost put the car in reverse but

knew we could never go back

the way we came. In the end,

I just drove through

the intersection and went home.

We fled the scene but could not get away

from ourselves. It was still Tuesday

afternoon, but even the light in the kitchen

looked dimmer because now we knew

what we always suspected was true—

History has always been happening.

I didn’t know what to do

except go to work

in the morning, where I read

your name in the news.

I’ve heard this story

too many times, and

I still don’t know you—

Who are you

Emmanuel? What do you do—

not for a living—but when you are

at home with yourself? Do you

bake bread, count stars, sing

to your children? Where

do you live with your family?

When is your birthday? Why

are you crying? How

is your mother? Where

does it hurt? When

will it end? When

will it end/how

to begin?

N is for No One

When I was a girl, I ran

with the boys. Now I am grown.

I ride an underground train

to work and come home, tired

of eating alone and sleeping

with ghosts of old lovers.

O is for Orlando

1.

My enemy

has shingled nails

and thick red

wrists. I know him

where he sleeps

and eats.

I call him

the Devil

the White Man

Father.

When I was a girl,

the world was death

and the stench

of this breath,

and all life

winnowed down

to a luminous

pearl

of light

that I kept

in a coffer

to read by.

2.

Eventually I went

off to school

but he shadowed

after me always,

and I lived

a perpetual

half-life,

painting my face

and pretending

away the blood

diamonds.

I was still afraid

of making

the wrong mark

on the page

when you stood up

at the library table

and slowly

coaxed

a little brown

cricket

out of the air.

For a moment,

it lived

in the palm

of your hand,

then leapt

onto the paper,

where I watched

the poem

shimmering—

a living thing

composed

of your breath.

For two years,

we wrote

together

at adjacent tables.

You told me stories

and sometimes

my ears hurt

with hearing,

but I listened

intently

to the sound

of your pen

as you dissected

3.

My father is dead now

but his brethren

keep coming—helmeted

men for whom

nothing is sacred—

brandishing cannons

and skewering the earth.

All I can tell you

you already know:

his law books

are sorcery;

weakness is

the source

of his power;

he will perish

by his own

chemical hand.

Sometimes it feels

like an age

of scorched dirt

and trash fires

but water

extinguishes flame

and soothes

over the rocks.

I offer

my hands

folded together

in prayer

for guardians

daylight and cold

northern waters—

kissing the riverbed

and speaking

the truth

in audible tongues.

Mni Wiconi.

P is for Philip

Phil kissed me in the moonlight by the white-gold

Coliseum. I took it like a promise, but he just wanted

to shut me up and fuck in the park, but

that was all I really wanted anyway:

a lover to run with down the Vatican steps.

We never did see the bulls run at Pamplona,

but he took a bus upstate to meet me at the races

and he wrote me from Tokyo, so I thought maybe

we would hold hands at the movies in Old City Philadelphia,

but the closer we were to home, the less he cared

to know me. The ghost of another woman haunted

my nights, and when he evaporated into the sunlight,

I lay in bed with my back to the door because

I didn't want to know my place on the sidelines. Instead

I waited up late for a call that never came through,

hungry for something to love.

In the end, he said I was spoiled by my rearing;

then stole pearl earrings from my bed-stand.

I take it back. He didn’t do that,

but my mirrored aviators disappeared after he wore them

to the train station. I know probably left them

on the milk counter at the coffee shop,

but I always blamed him for walking away

when I was desperate to get away from myself.

In the end, I took back my books and gave him

an empty box full of his things,

but once you’ve been to bed with a boy

you’ll always kind of know him. Like

I remember how one cold night he told me a secret

that I've kept so well I'll never forget it:

something about arsenic and the pigs getting sick.

And when I asked him where his father lived

I can still sense the sharp intake of breath

when he said, “My Daddy lives in heaven.”

Q is for Quentin/Quintin

1.

My mother was a school teacher.

She worked hard in the city all day,

so she wrote a classified ad

for a homemaker to raise me

and nurse me for pay, to lay me

down in a crib beside her fifth child:

a fair boy, who is now a grown man,

with flushed cheeks and dark lashes.

2.

Now I am a teacher in a gray

endless city. I lecture about

sentences and poetics to grown men

and women who know more

about the world than I.

When we read the autobiography

of a martyred American man,

Q took me aside and told me

a harrowing tale about how he crossed

paths with the great man's

assassins. Sometimes it is hard to know

who teaches whom and what is the lesson.

So let the cards fall where they may.

Sometimes the mind goes

very still, the eyes loosen

and you see for a moment

life branching like capillaries

in cryptic and fractal patterns.

R is for Ricky

sweeten me with molasses.

show me your dragon. tell me

your dreams, drummer boy.

because I want to know

how your ears burn to hear

the sound of snow

before it falls.

play me like a drum

drummer boy. climb me

like a blossoming tree

and I’ll crown you

king of my quivering

cup runneth over with

spirit made flesh and

the body electric.

for a cold spring spell

the energy flowed freely

between us. we played

neverland make-believe

tarot-card games

as if I were still a girl

and you were already a man.

then the song ended.

you stopped pretending

and the light went out

of your voice.

did your sister snap

her fingers? was it my daddy’s

bad ghost? or that drug-

addled zombie, hammering

walls at four in the morning

trailing his long, gray hair?

he cobbled a ladder, climbed

in your window and knocked

the door from its hinges. the glass

shattered, and your heart raced

ahead of you, away from me.

there was nothing to do

but make you a potion

to transpose energy

back to your favor,

bless you with the ocean

of my dark affection,

and watch you go like water

in a stream of troubled

consciousness.

I cried but I do not regret it.

with one taste of that sweet-

bitter peach, my eyes blossomed

esoteric and wide with

the hidden, forbidden

knowledge of joy

like the glitter in your beard

the last time you kissed me

and whispered, maybe someday

you’ll take me to see your gypsy.

S is for Seçkin

1.

When we met at the playhouse, I saw the ghost of Dickens in the stairwell. When we went outside, breath plumed around us, and you said you could smell the snow.

2.

Your kiss is warm light in the attic. You take the blood diamonds from my ears and place them on the shelf in the corner. Then you take me to bed.

3.

Last night I saw you in a dream. I woke up in a panic and washed all the dishes in the sink. I wiped down the kitchen, moved by an unnamed anxiety. On the street, my breath trembled, and my thoughts branched out into the cold extremity. It was not until late afternoon that I remembered the dream: I saw you at arm’s length. Then closer. Your proximity. That was all.

Now, every time a man walks into the room, I am disappointed when he isn’t you.

4.

The puppy is teething and the muffins are burnt. The coffee is weak. We smoke a cigarette and watch the pink sun set down the hill.

5.

What’s the worst that can happen? you asked to console me. I laughed a hard laugh. The worst already happened a long time ago. Every time I close my eyes, it happens again. Of course, I can’t say this out loud. My mouth is a wound. It festers. I want to speak, but the words bleed internally.

6.

Yesterday morning, you told me you were going back to Berlin. The puppy screamed like a howler monkey. I tried to smile and said I would miss you.

Later I cried in the washroom. My hair hung heavy and the tooth ached at the thought of it. I went down for breakfast, and you fed me bread and tomatoes. I was already lonely for you when you sat beside me.

7.

When we decided to drive to New Orleans, everyone advised me against it. They said it would hurt more to grow closer, but I didn’t care. I wanted to spend ten days alone with you in a car.

The country unfolded over the dashboard. You sang Turkish ballads and fed me pistachios out of your hand. I had just opened my mouth when my mother called me home for the funeral. She said I would regret it forever if I don't pay my respects, but what I have always regretted is that we didn’t keep driving south and south and west into the future.

Instead we turned back, ran out of gas, got a flat, sat for the eulogy, and kept going until we hit a dead end in Detroit.

8.

Behind the diner, I followed the signs upstairs to a parlor. The fortune-teller held open a rose-colored curtain. I shuffled the deck. The painters had been painting. The chemical smell. I cut the cards and breathed into my inquiry. I could see you in the alley out the window, but in the cards she saw another man.

9.

We got back at sunrise. I slept one last time in your bed. You spent the next day packing your things, and I drove you to the airport. Then it was over and I was alone. The lady at the laundromat fed me with her pity.

10.

When I called you desperate from the racetrack, the connection was bad, and you couldn’t hear the walls crashing around me. I tried to escape, but you said not to come to Berlin. I was a girl, and your voice was so hard. I had to break it like a toy.

After that, I spent more and more time with your friend Burkan. Until we culminated the solstice.

11.

Years later, I walked two hundred miles back across continents, retracing my steps to see you in Istanbul. My feet bled, and a white wind swept over the Bosphorus. I left a crystal on the altar, but you weren’t waiting for me at the gates. For three days I wandered through a labyrinth of towers and domes, lost in my dream of the city. Everything beautiful. I have never been so alone.

12.

Now I see it all like a projection. I can’t quite recall who I was. Just a young girl in love. Thin. All skin and bone, a stream of gold hair, such beautiful and ugly thoughts. As if it happened to someone else, and I am just hearing about it through the cracks in her voice.

T is for Tommy

Tommy put his fingers

in my pocket in

an empty auditorium.

Then he walked away.

The music played

discordantly because

the acoustics

were not planned.

Accordingly.

It scared me

how I liked it.

U is from Ulysses, for Burkan

I remember how you nailed me, up against the wall

my limbs hung like a picture you wanted to remember.

I know what boys want—those awful thunderbolts—

but you look more of a man with [your] beard

grown in, and I have grown tired of wrangling.

I was pale with excitement, drawing out the thing

by the hour, but you can’t fool a lover.

Once or twice I had a suspicion.

I found the long hair on [your] coat.

Tell me who are you thinking of?

Who is it? Tell me [a] name.

I am not a nymph like Calypso.

Nor I am Helen of Troy.

For years, I walked beside you and now

I wake up alone every morning

to unravel another day at the loom.

Waiting and waiting for what?

Every day is an odyssey

and I am as cunning as no man

traversing the cosmos alone.

V is for Vivian / Duval

This is not my story to tell but

something bad happened.

Tragic. Outside the bodega.

Past midnight. A bullet cut

through the thick city heat.

Everyone talking. Internet news

reports showing old pictures

as I pictured his steady yellow

gaze over the separating desk—

his mind cut like a blade

as he handily dissected

my reading of the text.

I wrapped myself in the colors

of mourning but wasn't prepared

for the ceremony. I didn't know

the right customs, couldn't recognize

him, couldn't see anything

except his four-year-old daughter

and the woman who fell to her knees.

I lowered my head and left

as the coffer was closed.

Outside the sky was a black sunken

thing, and the way the wind screamed

sounded like him, banging

his fists on the roof of this world.

The clouds heaved, livid

with rain, and I drove through

the storm until a blaze of light

showed through the dark veil

and I swear. I saw a spirit

soar over New York.

W is for William

Some men look at the world with open

distrust and with longing. Others

soften their faces with beards.

Youth passes over both like a cloud.

Fashions change, but we remain—

altered versions of our former selves.

I used to think the path would be obvious,

that we would cross over a threshold

and suddenly become

knowledgeable women

& men, but instead we learn only

the depths of our ignorance.

I don't even know if we threw rice

at your wedding, though I remember

a cake, topped with two candied

owls and that I was late, carrying

the veil to your bride.

Just yesterday you were correcting

my sentences, and the boy—sleeping

upstairs—was only a prayer.

Last night, I referred to The Book

of Good Fortune and learned

this lunar year will be ruled over

by tyrants. Thus we continue

to gather evidence that steadily

echoes our trespasses.

The only things I have learned

with certainty are the words

for my errors and to try

to stand even, even when

discord turns underfoot.

Each dawn is a strange

murmuration of starlings,

inexplicable as the force

and the virtue of will.

X is for ?

X is easier to say

than is the foreign names

I gave you. Midnight

was a party in the garden,

a train in the Balkans, or the Citadel

at Athens. I saw you coming

through the courtyard.

I looked up and lowered

my eyes. Then we got stoned

and opened to the sky. But when

I let that desperate girl

escort you home,

I hated her so much

that I loved you—a strange expanse,

flushed cheeks, dark lashes.

Y is for You, Whoever You Are

I don’t know you but

I know you. You are who

I talk to when I talk to

the bathroom mirror,

peer through the well-lighted

windows past midnight,

or throw a crystal

into the shimmering

East River. Because

I am tired of being

alone. Tortured daughter

of a powerful sorcerer.

Little girl whipping boy.

How gracefully

I took my rapings with

every lance and glare

of the camera.

I turned noisily red,

hid my face and faced

the camera again.

Aquarius. Poetess.

Rising lioness. Left-handed

redhead, born in the year

of the black water dog.

I stood on stages.

Went through phases.

Tried to die and wished

I had never been born.

Fourth grade master forger.

Crooked class president.

Little Ivy League school-

girl. Too good to be bad.

Too bad to be good.

Bare legs in a short

black skirt. Precarious

cocktails on a cocktail

tray. Pinned to the wall.

Squirming away.

Dumpster. Smoke rings.

Little plastic baggie.

Pressure gauge crack pipe.

Suburban Philadelphia.

Jersey Shore. New York.

Interstate. Car crash.

Stiff. Bookish. Intransigent.

Placing bets. A student

of the politics

of horse racing.

A doctor of philosophy.

Experimental poetry.

Thick with the gypsies

& searching the world over:

Paris, Istanbul, Athens,

a train in the Balkans,

everyday on the subway,

because all I want is to be

cast out of Eden

with you. Maybe one day,

I’ll turn a corner and see you

on Grand Concourse

at the Laundromat

in the kitchen in

the afternoon light.

Then Venus will transit

the sun. We will be one.

Photo credit: Emily Dryden

Z is for Zachary

When I wrote your name in my diary,

I wanted those letters to know me.

Your hands were every stranger’s hand

I’d never hold. When I was a girl,

I learned how to love by loving.

Sequentially I loved all the boys

in the schoolyard, on the seesaw,

under the trees because

little girls learn alphabetically:

we are an ancient race

of little, fetal teenage people

and all of our troubles are real.

Notes on the Text

1. Adam: The name, text and images in this poem are used with Adam's permission.

2. Burkan: This text was vetted by B., who approved the content and selected his pseudonym.

3. Charlie: The quoted text is from a summer camp signature book.

4. David: Name and text are used with David's consent, and the photograph of Pet Murmur was taken by Gabriella A. in Canasi, Cuba.

5. Earl: This poem narrates a series of true events surrounding three different men who shared the same name, but I have altered some of the distinguishing characteristics of its subjects.

6. Fred: This photograph of Pet Murmur was taken on her first day of school.

7. Greg: The photograph of Prospect Terrace Park was taken by Michael K. and used with his permission. Adam provided the picture of Sebastian the cat, and the photo of Pet Murmur smoking a cigarette was mostly likely taken by Ashley B. Greg vetted and approved the language of this text, and his image is used with permission. You can read his account of our relationship here: http://www.scrambledgregs.com/snippets/after-running-from-hidden-lake-academy/

8. Harris: Permission sought & pending.

9. Ivan: I have been unable to contact Ivan, but the photographs from the racetrack were taken by my mother and used with her consent.

10. Justin: Name, text, and image are used with Justin's permission, and the photograph of Pet Murmur was taken in Mexico City by Erica K.

11. Kamron: Permission sought & pending. Pet Murmur self-portrait, age 17.

12. Luis: Luis and I lost touch a long time ago, and I don't know how to contact him. Photographs taken by Pet Murmur in Havana, Cuba.

13. Michael: This poem was written in dialogue and collaboration with Michael S. The photograph of Michael and Pet Murmur was taken by Jackie H. at Louie's Family Restaurant in Providence, RI and is used with her permission. Newspaper clippings are from "Providence Man Shot by Trooper" by Karen Lee Ziner and Michael Smith, published in The Providence Journal on 27 June 20XX.

14. No One: There is no one to note.

15. Orlando: This piece contains direct references and allusions to the poetry of Orlando White, who vetted and approved this piece and whose work can be read here.

16. Philip: Permission sought & pending.

17. Quentin/Quintin: Quentin is a stretch, but Quintin approved the content of this poem.

18. Ricky: Ricky provided the photograph of his dragon tattoo and vetted the content of this poem. Illustrations from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck®, known also as the Rider Tarot and the Waite Tarot, reproduced by permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Copyright ©1971 by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Further reproduction prohibited. The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck® is a registered trademark of U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

19. Seckin: The text and images are used with Seckin's permission.

20. Tommy: Tommy approved the content of this poem and the use of his image. Photograph clipped from the The Lion's Roar, a high school newspaper, credit unknown.

21. Ulysses: This is a collage poem that uses quoted language from James Joyce's Ulysses. The italicized text is drawn from Molly Bloom's soliloquy and remixed with original lines. The poem is written for Burkan and published with his consent.

22. Val: This poem is published with the consent of someone close to the deceased.

23. William: Will vetted this poem and approved its content and images. Note also that Will's father, pictured top, is also a William, though he goes by another name.

24. X: Names unknown.

25. You: Photograph of Pet Murmur by Emily Dryden.

26. Zachary: The text and photo published with Zak's permission.

27. All logos and artwork are designed by the artist and illustrator Nicole France.