Tuesday, January 21, 2020

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

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