1.    Originally published as "The Mouse Trial" in Rodent Quarterly (v3n5), a publication dedicated exclusively to writings about mice: mouse poems, anecdotes about rodents, lab reports, recipes for mouse-inspired delicacies (cheese dips, sauces, ratatouille), reports on any newfound species, and of course hints, advice and insider tips on exterminating the varmints. P.L. DeM. and then editor, Humphrey Burger, met in a bar after DeM. performed a reading there (the reading was actually one not solicited by the establishment, and Burger waved off DeM.’s impending arrest by saying the poet was his guest). Burger was impressed by DeM.’s work and promised publication if the poet agreed to change his title to something more fitting with the Rodent’s stated purpose. This relationship was to last many years and create a forum through which DeM. would have most of his early works published, though the titles would be changed later to something more suitable (Q. Knickers, Pests: DeM. and the Not-Giving-Upness of His Years With Rodent Quarterly, 1976).
2.     One of the many fish clumped together under the classification of ‘sardine’: its head alone is often enjoyed as a delicacy in Korean cuisine.
3.     Lines 8-16 also appear in "Dismembering Bartenders" (The Thing Hanging at the Back of My Throat, 1953), though the angora sweater is replaced by mohair in the later work.
4.    This line has often been considered the first instance of DeM.’s ‘dyslexic technique.’ Anagrams have offered many interpretations of this line (from a rousing recapitulation of the Postmodern ethic to a request from its narrator for another helping of tiramisu), but Paul RuPaul (DeM. as an Exercise in Reader Response, Aristotelian Method and Holding Back the Urgent Need to Pee, 1964) found evidence of ‘dyslexic technique’ in a self-published, untitled poem dated ten years earlier (P.L. DeM., Brown Spittle and Other Poems of No Worth, 1945(?)).
5.    Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the first flushing toilet.
6.    ‘To pair winged with straw rather than pipe would have served me better purpose’--P.L. DeM., "Interview with a Rat" (Rodent Quarterly, v5n3).
7.    ‘Nausea set in by this point’--Ibid.
8.    This stanza was later used as an epigraph in the essay, "Trees: Self-Organizing Systems of Leaf-Withering and the Purpose of Poetry." This essay was a transcription of a talk given to runners-up in a national search for young talent, and the epigraph was attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. DeM. lamented to his audience after the reading of the stanza: ‘You know when to hang up your keyboard when you realize an addicted boob like Samuel T.C. can write a better set of lines when hooked to a hookah and getting head from a stank wench than you can after twenty years of professional training’ (P.L. DeM., "Trees: Self-Organizing...": Works They Wouldn’t Print in the Selected, 1968).
9.    The substance human flesh turns into when allowed to freeze.
10.    The anachronistic nature of this quatrain led Nove McGuirk to theorize that the poem’s inclusion into Rodent Quarterly effected not only a change of title, but these four lines as a puzzle to Rodent readers:

Humphrey Burger may have convinced DeM. not only a change in title but to offer a kind of ‘mouse maze’ in the work itself; the unusual starting letters of the four lines (V, R, X and N (in that order)), when paired with their ‘opposite’ letters (found when the alphabet is basically folded in half so that A is paired with Z, B with Y, and so on) form EICM (in that order), an anagram for the word ‘mice,’ the central theme of Rodent Quarterly (N. McGuirk, P.L. DeM. and the Method Behind the Slightly Off-Centeredness, 1958*).

*McGuirk’s only full-length critical publication of DeM., or any other major poet, for that matter; she was removed from her position at the U of M shortly thereafter. This book of criticism is not cited as any reason for her termination.
11.    Long thought a misprint, the ‘me’ here was restored with its original, authorial intentions when it was revealed by biographer Neville Bloodwart that DeM. was prone to a nervous tick when speaking in the possessive, especially in reference to alcohol. Close friends called DeM., when in the throes of this tick, ‘The Pirate DeM.' DeM. would squint his left eye and speak from the right side of his mouth. His voice would become raspy, and he would demand ‘me drink,’ or ‘me shot of mescal’ (N. Bloodwart, Epitaph: or, the Sad, All-too-Long Tale of a Miscreant, 1978).
12.     DeM. offered a revision of this line to his anthologist during the compiling of his Selected Works, but this revision was returned to DeM. shredded quite professionally and tainted with a ‘smelly residue’ (P.L. DeM., Works They Wouldn’t Print in the Selected, 1968).
13.     Authenticity of this reference is in dispute: the invention and marketing of Silly Putty did not happen until five years after the final version of this poem.
14.    ‘Beast’ could very likely have been mistaken for the word ‘breast’: the original draft of the poem for R.Q. was written on used paper towel. DeM. himself was loathe to authorize the narrator’s ‘pocket’ as one found on ‘the Beast’ or ‘the Breast’ (Bloodwart); both readings have spawned various interpretations (see R. Brick, Cooking With Sherry: DEM. and His Critics).
15.    see note 9. Another byproduct of the freezing process.
16.    see note 15.
17.    A mathematical theorem used by numerologists to predict the winners of horse races. Sometimes used in factoring the odds in a cockfight.
18.    The source of this quote is undiscovered, if indeed there is a source at all (see 8). Many critics, however, doubt DeM. was capable of such hypotactical structure (see F.T.D.S.M.L-K.R. Gank, "Who Is This DeM., Anyway?", 1956).
19.    DeM.’s continued affinity for S.T. Coleridge is evident when this line appears as marginalia in DeM.’s book-length poem, The Growth of Sponge (1964). This is only one of three marginalia in the entire poem, and is considered by some as an error. DeM. was prone to flashbacks at the point of Sponge, and sometimes started composing work already published as though he were creating new work (Bloodwort). The erroneous nature of this marginalia is also argued in that the two other instances involve demands upon the reader to reject the work that he is reading:

   Vile! Begone! Away with
   Your entreatment to delve into
   This Scourge! Be kind
   And allow its Passage
   Into Obscurity! (112)

      and

   You’re still here?!
   Still, you plod Along?!
   End this tyranny! (268)

     The marginalia offered through this particular line offers not even a reversal of these condemnations (B. Dickus, Spam and the Art of DeM., 1975).
20.     see following.

Richard K. Weems

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