"Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Girlhood x A Haunting summons the girl sleuth, Nancy Drew. Bergamino's gorgeous gurlesque poems take the reader on a tour of the horrors of high school ('Her ghosts push through her school’s green halls, laughing their stuffy laugh'), child abuse ('When my father corners his daughter in detail he warns her, at least, tells her, Nancy, I’m going to talk to you like a grown-up now, treat you like one, break the glass of my anger and let it evergreen in you, all myrtle and clove'), and trauma ('where your memory splits from sight'). True crime is popular because viewing violation provides the illusion of control in a culture where so many are unsafe. Bergamino’s book channels one of the OG feminist icons of the genre and empowers readers to navigate, perhaps even survive, the true crimes of childhood. I love this book."

— Claudia Cortese,

author of Wasp Queen

"Forget clues—the poems in Girlhood x A Haunting confront a new kind of investigation. How do you solve the mystery of a body when the body is your own? Through Bergamino’s signature and skilled voice, balanced formal tension, and adroit cross-examination of both history and memory, these poems build a new mythology for the queer detective work required of so many of us. Urgent, evocative, and, indeed, haunting, Bergamino has collected Nancy Drew and put her to work on the most vital of missions: self-reclamation. No other poet writing today could handle this case so deftly or with such clever care."

— Meg Day,

author of Last Psalm at Sea Level