Royalty. By Puma Perl

At the poetry reading

today

I overheard 

two people discussing

royalty checks

It struck me

that I’d not deposited

the five-dollar

check

I’d earned

at the Brooklyn book fair

Rummaging

through my bag,

I dropped

my sunglasses

on the tile floor

While retrieving

them

my leather cap

fell off of my head,

landed on a candle,

and caught on fire

The room filled

with smoke,

the fire alarms

went off

The reading

was cancelled

because

the unbearable smell 

of burning leather

made everyone sick 

My favorite cap

was ruined

but I did find

the check

in the bottom

of my bag,

made out

in the amount

of only four dollars

and eighty cents.

Puma Perl is a poet and writer, with five solo collections in print. The most recent is Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque Books, 2019.) She is the producer/creator of Puma’s  Pandemonium, which brings spoken word together with rock and roll, and she performs regularly with her band Puma Perl and Friends. She’s received three New York Press Association awards in recognition of her journalism, and is the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing.

Photo, Dina Regine