Poem 30/30 Absurdities

ABSURDITIES

I have written 34 poems and 2 short stories about a man I knew for 27 days.

I continue to mistake hope for actuality.

People talk to me. Then I get a paycheck.

Most days, I am asked for directions at least twice.

I want someone to love me even though I don’t love him.

My lower Manhattan neighborhood is inaccessible. All roads lead to Chinatown. I continue to eat take-out from the Golden Forest on Grand Street.

I am saddened by a gaggle of East Village Mommies waiting for the bus with their blonde kids. The prettiest Mommies talk only to one another.

I lie about my age; if I told the truth, everyone would tell me how good I look.

30 Poems in 30 days. Some guys I know always write 5 a day and no one makes a fuss over it.

This. What I’m doing right now. This. This moment, which is melting as I tap nonsense into keys just so…

Last night at the Nuyorican. Miguel Algarin took my performance piece seriously and defended my honor. He forgot he used to throw me out.

This.

This.

This.

© puma perl, 4/30/11

Poem 29/30, Let It Spin

LET IT SPIN

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty… Gloria, Let the Great World Spin, page 303

Life reveals itself
on a need to know basis

I decline intervention

Every step hurts
more than you imagine

Wish I slept
like you,
on my back,
deeply

How are you?
Fine.
Nice day.
Yeah.

I have no pets
because they’ll die
before me.
I leave everybody
just in case.

I’ve always lied
about cookies,
hide them behind
the coffee cans.

Just for me.

All the truth
I can tell
right now.

Honestly.

© puma perl, 4/29/11

Poem 28/30 Response to the Shark

Getting a day ahead of myself. This is a response to an "American Poetry," by Louis Simpson, used by Willie Perdomo in an Acentos workshop a few weeks back. You can find his poem here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240770


RESPONSE TO THE SHARK

Ruby True reaches down,
down, down
like Alice,
in her patent leather shoes

She reads poems to Tupac.
Stories set to rewind.
Memories yet to happen.
Lives unlived.

Forgive me my broken words, she writes,
release my relentless voice.

Grace me only with my name.

Ruby True.
Ruby True.
Ruby True.

© puma perl, 4/27/11

Poem 27/30 Lowering the Bar

hmmmm I might be lowering the bar on the writing, too, just to get through this 30/30. The best way to look at it is that it's a way of committing to a daily discipline, and I end up with 30 drafts, some of which may survive.

LOWERING THE BAR

I will dump the guy in 8 hours if you show up with a fully packed van ready to ride. If that doesn't happen, we will drink coffee on Saturday morning.

She hit “send” and got dressed, thigh high stockings under jeans and Cowboy boots, just in case.

You look like every girl I chased through the maze of Stanton and Suffolk, when my junk levels were low enough to care about it, he responded. Meet me on the avenue. We’ll live like hermits, hit the road like Kerouac.

His driver’s license was suspended. He packed a change of clothes, just in case, and bought a bus ticket.

They spent New Year’s Eve together. Five years later, he’s married and she’s still writing about it.

She’s already had the best sex she’s ever going to have. The bar has fallen to the floor; she trips over it getting out of bed.

The man beside her sleeps lightly until mid-morning, when he lumbers into oblivion.

Recently, her dreams have begun to anger her, centered on impossible tasks and unlikely phone calls from people who despise her. She wakes up annoyed with herself for her semi-conscious acquiescence, and heads for the computer.

This is the last second street story, she swears, no more fucking-in-abandoned- building scenarios. She got pregnant that way once, convinced by cocaine that the police had surrounded the block; she didn’t even like the guy she was with, but there was nothing else to do.

Some days she doesn’t like the guy in the bed, either, but she figures she might like him again the next, so she distracts herself with solitary porn. He does the same.

Maybe that’s called getting along. She’s never tried it before, so can’t say for sure.

© puma perl, 4/27/11

Poem 26/30 Directions

DIRECTIONS

My blood is my compass.
I learned how to get around from my father.
He never drove a car but he memorized subway maps,
knew which streets curved into avenues, remembered
stables on Avenue C, Bronx farmland, which ships docked
on Gouverneur Slip and which ones sailed out to Red Hook,
called strangers “My Friend.” The only time I saw him get
nervous was the day a cop reprimanded him for jaywalking
on 42nd Street; it was the closest he ever came to a criminal
record. My mother believed I couldn’t learn to drive,
You have to grow up in a car, she said, but I showed her,
got a learner’s permit when I was 19, bought a Chevy Nova
older than I was, drove to Florida, no problem, I-95 straight
through, and hook a left. Go back in reverse. Wish I could.
From my father, who never left the city, I learned to navigate
without fear – I am never lost. I may not know exactly where
I’m going, but I look at the road and I know exactly where I am.

© puma perl, 4/26/11

Poem 4/25 Sleep and Sleeplessness

SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS

I
Why is it so quiet at night?
The window is filled with ghosts and subways.
If I turn quickly to the left the spirit stops crying.
Or is it the right?

II
The Russian man’s drunk again.
He screams all night. I can’t sleep.
I call the police, then he calls the police on me for calling the police. That’s why I never call the police.
I decide to slash his tires.
There are cameras in the garage.

III
We take turns getting up and going to the bathroom.
Sometimes we say hello as we pass each other.

IV
The Chinese man is off his meds again.
He stamps his feet and drops marbles on the wooden floor.
One morning I hear him yelling, Don’t’ take me away!
The noise is gone, but I can still smell his cigarettes.

V
I like the sound of cars on the highway.
It makes my bed more comfortable.

VI
I can’t sleep.
You can’t sleep?
No. I can’t sleep.
Feeling guilty about something?
No! Are you?
No!

VII
I’m dreaming about an unattractive man.
I say to him, The only reason I’m having sex with you is so you’ll shut up for an hour.
It’ll only take ten minutes, he replies.
REM sleep does not improve my sex life.


VII
According to the Discovery Channel, in a typical lifetime we spend about six years dreaming.
If you’re snoring, you’re not dreaming. Your snoring may also be knocking a couple of years off of my dream life.
Mary Shelley created Frankenstein in a dream.
If you didn’t snore so loud, I’d have written a classic novella by now.

IX
Why is it so quiet?
I can’t sleep.

© puma perl, 4/25/11

Poem 24/30 Like Texas

LIKE TEXAS

being with you is like being with Texas
sprawling, so large we’re both lost,
vague, indirect, meaty, a grassy plain,
deserted, space to spread your arms
country/city lots of people, but nobody
there, hospitable, friendly, forgetful
big you, little me, awake at dawn
places to park, roads to ride, cowboy
boots, pork sausage, Mexican breakfast,
Arkansas mind, south-central hands,
crowded airports, empty streets, hot
snow, riverwalks, dogs, cameras,
hats, unanswered questions, nods,
teeth, Alamos, knives, day of the
dead, being with you is like Texas

© puma perl, 4/24/11

Poems 23/30 Haiku on Wheels

Haiku on Wheels

I
Arizona us
Sweet watermelon sunsets
Behind the strip malls

II
Three on the terrace
John between our tie-dyed shirts
You delete your socks

III
Segovia us
Indian motel clerk says
Lots of bikers here

IV
Harley in the hills
Photos in black leather vests
Motel has a pool

V
In New Mexico
We fight over gas prices
The moon doesn’t care

VI
In Van Horn Texas
The Sweet Shoppe is deserted
There is just one bar

VII
Last stop New Jersey
Washington Heights say good bye
Take the A train home

© puma perl, 4/23/11

Poem 22/30 Respecting Your Memory

RESPECTING YOUR MEMORY

Well, I guess I’m not getting high today,
you said, gathering up your books and sheet music,
we were sitting on Dennis’ stoop on Seventh Street,
I wore a boys’ Yankee jacket, it was an April day
like your last one, maybe a baseball day, I was broke
as usual, Wait, I said, I’ll get us something if I can get a taste..
But where will we go? You asked because you
were always a gentleman, you had a wife and kids
over in Baruch, and you’d never lock the bathroom
door like I used to do, just one reason why
I didn’t live anywhere - Don’t worry, I said,
Come on, we wound up on the same cop line
as the trumpet player from Boston, he had a car
so we pulled over under the FDR on South Street
and you sniffed your bags, always a gentleman,
while we spilled blood and water on the torn front seat
and then I wanted coke, She’s got eyes to get some coke
said the trumpet player and we dropped you off,
you and your violin, always a gentleman,
no matter what, and we probably did a bunch
more stuff I’d regret if I remembered, but right now
the only thing I regret is my failure to follow
my instincts, I wish I’d found you again
Just to say Hey because I always liked you

You were always such a gentleman.

© puma perl, 4/22/11

Poem 21/30 Seeing You

More than 2/3 of the way there and I dug up an old prompt of Rachel McKibbens' http://rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com/2009/01/poetry-exercise-1.html in which the writer is asked to write down 3 superpowers, write a bland journal entry, and then choose one of the superpowers and rewrite. The following is my journal entry, followed by my poem. Rachel wrote that she was inspired by Louis Jenkins' poem, Walking Through a Wall, which you can read here http://robinchapmanspoemaday.blogspot.com/2005/03/by-louis-jenkins-walking-through-wall.html

Journal Entry:
The bus made a lot of stops. Some lady in a wheelchair needed to be strapped in. I got off at 14th Street and Avenue A because so many people were getting on. I walked one block and bought a medium size coffee at Bruno’s. I decided to get a low-fat marble muffin. It cost more than I thought it would. I crossed the street, entered the building, climbed one flight of stairs, unlocked the door, said hello to Maria, went to my desk, ate part of the muffin and drank the coffee.

Seeing You

I don’t know why I laughed at the bus driver,
maybe because he looked so serious and intent
on his task, lowering the ramp for the grumpy
yet regal wheelchair-bound lady who never raises
her eyes or smiles or says thank you. Fortunately,
I had made myself invisible the second he hit
the lever for the kneeling function, as I’m
acutely aware of my unfortunate tendency
to laugh loudly and inappropriately at the wrong
times. Funerals, obviously. Once, when my dog
screamed as the vet administered a distemper
shot. She’s hysterical, my mother explained
nervously, since she didn’t want the animal
doctor to think she’d raised a sociopath. But
that was before I’d learned how to disappear
at will, as I did this morning, on the M14A bus.
I reached my destination without any additional
outbursts, bought my usual coffee at Bruno’s.
Pedro, the sweet Mexican guy remembered my
voice and did a pretty good job of placing
the cup in my invisible hand, made his usual
joke You look very nice today and we laughed
in a normal way, which snapped me back
to visibility, and fortunately I did look
rather attractive in a new purple sweater
and matching eye shadow, so Pedro did not
have to renege on his compliment, and the day
managed to pass with neither laughter nor tears.

© puma perl, 4/21/11

Poem 20/30 you are a mushroom

you are a mushroom

you don’t throw birthday parties because you love too many people and can’t bear to leave anyone out you live in a studio apartment with a cat and your boyfriend when he’s in town he’s in three bands so he’s on the road a lot forgets to call you go out with your friends you have so many friends your mother calls you Miss Congeniality even though you’ve never watched a Miss America Pageant you can’t cook you bake zucchini bread and carrot muffins with raisins you’d rather munch than chew you order appetizers instead of meals shrimp puffs and coconut wings you are a mushroom making things better with no particular taste you’re ashamed of your dead plants you caught a mouse threw it out the window hide the television in the closet your sister’s a runaway whore she fucked your brother you never tell anyone about your genital warts your grandfather killed his second wife you write poems about your thighs do pilates your tit’s heavy enough to hold the diaries of anais nin you remove the television from the closet to watch american idol unless you’re boyfriend’s home everybody loves you because you really are a mushroom producing sunshine under ultraviolet lights, expanding fungus fruit bodies

© puma perl, 4/20/11

Poem 19/30 Answer Me?

ANSWER ME?

I cut my left hand slicing mushrooms.
Reminds me of William Carlos Williams
and his fucking grapes.

My mother cursed me with her unfortunate knees
and a belief that anyone who doesn’t respond
promptly to my messages is dead or gone.
Sometimes that’s the same thing.

Answer me?
Someday I may forget that you smell like my father,
who left me bad eyesight and a passion to read,
Not surprising, given his bipolarity.

My daughter thanked me for Nikki Giovanni and the Roots.
My son is glad that he couldn’t possibly be worse than me.
Luckily for the unborn, I stopped there.

We have all survived despite my foolish efforts.
You answered me and said you’d be hungry at eight.

I burned my ring finger boiling water for pasta,
reminding me of nothing.

© puma perl, 4/19/11

Poem 18/30 Inga's Daughter

INGA’S DAUGHTER

She was the kind of white girl everyone called China.
School started too early in the morning.
Her mother’s apartment was a mess until she ran away from the group home.
Inga, the mother, kept the snake and cats locked up in her room.
It was the the only dirty part of the house.
China woke up at four each afternoon, mopped the floors,
cooked dinner, went out for the night.
Inga’s job was to go to her program, spend the food stamps,
and download movies. She was surprisingly computer savvy.
The year China turned 15, they both had boyfriends in prison.
China’s got out first. Inga came home and her bedroom door
was slightly ajar, she said all you could see was their feet.
Inga said it looked cute.
The boyfriend was a pretty nice guy but he couldn’t stay out of trouble. He treated China decently, bought Chinese food, told her go to back to school.
She followed his advice, graduated first in her GED class.
Accepted to nursing school, but she got pregnant by the next guy.
The one who shot and killed her two years later.
She was strapping the baby into her car seat. If she hadn’t been so worried about the baby’s safety, she might have escaped.
Instead of getting shot in the back.
Her hair was long with new blond streaks and she wore a pink bathrobe.
She’d remembered the baby’s mittens. It was the first cold night of autumn.
It happened to be my birthday but that doesn’t really matter.
I knew her since she was 14, but not well enough to join the mourners, or so I was told.
The baby’s being raised by the other grandmother.
I don’t know what they tell her about her father.

© puma perl, 4/18/11

Poem 17/30 Inga

INGA

She wears a boa constrictor around her skinny neck, walks the old 14th Street, placidyls whores purple wigs pimps in platforms, Methadone Program six days a week, all her junkie friends are her “big brothers” forgot her son’s graduation shrink says she’s bipolar I think she’s just a bitch fights for her klonopin script lost parental rights gained them back didn’t want them I think she’s just a bitch her daughter dances at 20/20 sits on her brother’s lap at home she overslept missed high school nobody made her go She slit her wrists to teach the kids a lesson, I think she’s just a bitch

© puma perl, 4/17/11

Poem 17/30 Do You Think?

Used a prompt from Emily Kagan Trenchard:
Hey 30/30 folks - Here's a prompt: Your first line is, "This is not easy for me." Go.

DO YOU THINK?

This is not easy for me.
I am as speechless as I am duplicitous.
Do you think we’ll ever stop pretending?
Kim Basinger sits at her desk,
crisp white shirt, buttons open,
short, tweed skirt hiked up to her waist,
sheer black lacy stockings, stilettos climb the wall.
She can’t get Mickey Rourke out of her mind.
Finally, she gives in.
Do you think we’ll ever stop pretending?
This is not easy for me.
I am as reluctant as I am fascinated.
Literary auditory voyeurism works for me.
I’ve never been good at relationships,
or gadgets or balanced meals or tying shoes.
I only fall in love on federal holidays.
I am as distractible as I am immovable.
This is not easy for me.
Do you think we’ll ever stop pretending?

© puma perl, 4/17/11

Poem 16/30 Chance Happening

CHANCE HAPPENING
(I’ve been lucky, I’ll be lucky again – Bette Davis)

Luck - just a matter of chance meeting opportunity. You make your own luck my mother always said There’s no such thing as luck the teachers chimed in, study hard, make something of yourself, You wanna know from lucky? added my grandmother. A nice piece of chicken. See how lucky? Neither fortune nor Miss Fortune, I continue because the option is to quit, Luck never gives, it only lends - that’s what the Swedes say though what do you know, Sweden, you smorgasbord, you Greta Garbo, you kill yourself it’s winter again, Adolf Hitler on luck: What luck for the rulers that men do not think after all the shit I’ve done I’ve concluded that I’m lucky to be alive, it’s like dessert every day, and then and then and then I’m examining a photograph of a hot burlesque dancer, and notice that that the silk patch covering her vagina has slid to the side and you can actually see her pussy lips and WHAT’S THAT it’s the hood of her clitoris, you can see the hood of her clitoris, not only is this girl smoking hot and enormously talented, she wears her fucking clit outside her body, she probably cums the second you rub against her while mine stubbornly hides deep in the recesses of G Spot Street, I need teams of excavators mountain climbers tireless erections I need Viagra driven dicks determination commitment I don’t need love I need a flashlight and a map and a little bit of luck…but hot dancer girl took all the luck for herself that is my definition of luck, a perky, friendly, outgoing clitoris, you don’t earn it, work for it, choose for it, bet on it…it just is. I’d be born again if I was promised one in my next life, I’d be really really lucky…

© puma perl, 4/16/11

Poem 15/30 cut to ribbons

cut to ribbons

gratefully,
in dreams,
I destroy
my life’s work

ribbons stream
from my eyes

no words
more powerful
than a sleeping
child

please,
forget me

I am not
your role model

do not become me

no cluster
of letters
deserves
your tears

© puma perl, 4/15/11

Poem 14/30 Trunk in the Middle of the Room

TRUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM

Brown steamer trunk
sits in the middle
of the room

Don’t open it
Just because it’s there
says the voice

I open it just
because it’s there

Newspaper
Old shoes

Beneath the lining,
black/silver striped
shirts, all the same,
size Small

A note pinned
to fabric:

This is our code word
When I call you:

20/20

The trunk remains
wedged into the middle
of the room

© puma perl, 4/10/11

Poem 13/30 Making More

MAKING MORE
(Reflections from Jon Sands’ book release party)

Triple 14A’s meander up the avenue.
I’m reading The New Clean -
circle-eyed dogs, grandmother Grace,
a crisp sun-filled bench –
I believe that you are a great poet
because I’ve said
How the fuck did you do that???
at least three times, out loud,
schoolboy’s backpack knocking
into my shoulder, Adele loving
the last one in my ears

I read, and I remember moments.

Screaming poems off 10th Street rooftops
Before I gave it all to heroin
Writing a story that began
It was me and Louie
Before I gave it all to heroin
The box of drawings I left in Martin Wong’s
Ridge Street 6th floor walk-up apartment
Before I gave it all to heroin
The ghetto dollhouse with the tiny police lock
Before I gave it all to heroin

Windows open briefly, allowing
friends to fall in love with being friends,
create familiy, the lucky ones
transfused with blood brothers, the rest
of us hoping that maybe the world
was wrong, maybe we are not doomed
The iron gates once turned silver
Before I gave it all to heroin

I listen to your brilliance
Jon, Adam, Angel, Jeanann
I watch you shine
And envision the before,
Before I gave it all to heroin,
Before I learned how
to go make some more

© puma perl, 4/13/11

Press Release

Sent by Michele McDannold, Editor-in-Chief, Red Fez Publications

Greetings,

Why not celebrate National Poetry Month by featuring the talent of a local poet? Below is a press release from Red Fez Publications regarding Puma Perl, a NYC resident and author. I have been following Puma's literary career for several years and I am very pleased to have her work in an upcoming anthology from Red Fez. Her poetry and short stories appeal to a wide audience. For more information about Puma and her work, you can visit her website at http://pumaperl.blogspot.com/. I hope this information can be useful to you.

If you would like more information, to schedule an interview with the author or to receive an advance reading copy of the book mentioned, please contact me.

Regards,

Michele McDannold
Editor-in-Chief
Red Fez Publications

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Local Author To Be Published in Anthology

NEW YORK. Sunday, April 10, 2011 – Puma Perl, New York City resident and author, is one of fourteen authors featured in the upcoming publication of "Red Reader #1", a collection of literature and art published by Red Fez Publications. The book is the first in a series of print publications aimed at promoting the work of underground and under-recognized writers and artists.

Puma Perl is a NYC based writer, performance artist, producer, and curator. Her poetry and fiction have been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies. She is the author of the award-winning chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, and a full length collection, knuckle tattoos. She lives and writes on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker's Island, a NYC prison. She is a founding member of DDAY Productions, which presents poetry and performance events.

Red Reader #1 includes two poems, a short story and photography by Puma Perl. Editor Michele McDannold says 'Van Horn, Texas' is an excellent example of the type of writing they look for at Red Fez. “Puma's writing is clear, candid and earnest.”

The story is set in the small but enduring town of Van Horn, Texas and follows a woman as she strikes out on her own. It's a bumpy ride but she needs little and takes even less. The fascinating characters she meets along the way might be reason enough to stay, at least for a little while.

“Red Reader #1” will be available for free at the Zygote in my Fez event being planned for August in Dayton, Ohio. Advance reading copies are available for book reviewers and journalists.

For more information please visit http://redfez.net or http://pumaperl.blogspot.com.

About Red Fez Publications:
Established in 2002 and founded by Leopold McGinnis, Red Fez Publications is an Independent publisher committed to bringing recognition to underground and under-recognized writers and artists. Red Fez publishes an online literary journal featuring literature and art outside of the narrow, academic stream and has published over 350 authors from around the world. Poems and short stories that have first appeared on Red Fez have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, storySouth Million Writers Award, Sundress Publications Best of the Net and Dzanc Books Best of the Web.

Poem 12/30 Songs for the woman who falls in love too easy

SONGS FOR THE WOMAN WHO FALLS IN LOVE TOO EASY

It comes, one way or another.
Won’t let it stay away too long.
Ghost dances, firewalk shuffle,
it comes, at last, for that woman
who falls in love too easy, afraid
to get close to the banana man,
it comes, one way or another.
How it hurts, oh, she wonders
whatever happened to Silver City,
I won’t lie, you are my brother,
lost in a crazy Gold Forest.

It comes, one way or another.
Get back on your feet again,
everybody loves you, nobody cares;
let’s slowdive till we’re blind
race the dogs around the park
smoke up the garden roses.

It comes, one way or another.

© puma perl, 4/12/11

PS THANKS MAUX!!

TattoosDay

My stuff is up on the tattoos day blogspot today, complete with photo, poem, and links!


http://tattoosday.blogspot.com/

Poem 11/30 Night Slices

NIGHT SLICES

1:45 AM

Wake up.
Toothache is back.
Swollen face?
No health insurance.
Antibiotics.
Motrin.
Worry.
Fall asleep.

2:55 AM

Wake up.
Empty bed.

What are you doing?

Drinking Coca-Cola.

What are you watching?

Young Liz Taylor.
`
Go to sleep.

Look! Sal Mineo!

3:10 AM

What movie was that?

Giant.

Rock Hudson.

James Dean, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo. Everybody’s dead except Earl Holliman.

And Carroll Baker. She’s not dead.

But she’s fat. That counts as dead.

It does not! Go to sleep.

3:30 AM

Are you still up?

It’s going to be 107 degrees tomorrow.

No, it’s not!

You calling me a liar? 107 degrees!

You’re lying and you’re mean.

Oh, it’s my fault the earth is spinning closer to the sun?

No, but you don’t have to sound so pleased about it.

3:40 AM

Are you still up?

Yeah…can’t get comfortable.

Does your leg hurt?

It’s not a pain exactly, it’s more like an ache, you know when something is stiff, and you try to move it and…

Go to sleep.

Okay.

My face hurts.

107 degrees tomorrow.

Go to sleep.

© puma perl, 4/11/11

Poem #9/30 Moaning Lisa & Poppin Chulo

MOANING LISA AND HER POPPIN’ CHULO

Moaning Lisa woke up early, sleep
disrupted by her Poppin’ Chulo, hiding
in the bathroom, talking on the phone.

I’m just asking you if I can stay there
She heard him whisper hoarsely,
but she turned and saw him lying
innocently beside her as always,
snoring, drooling, smelling like himself.


Moaning Lisa examined him closely,
muttered fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,
swung her feet to the floor, avoided
all mirrors prior to make-up and coffee,
washed her clothes but not his,
still disturbed by her dream.

It was sunny. She’d hoped for rain.

Poppin’ Chulo slept on, hugging her pillow,
she once thought it was sweet, but learned
it meant nothing. She dropped a few pots
and finally disturbed him, he tumbled
from bed, he showered he dressed,
circled the room, perplexed and irate…

What’s the matter? she asked,
ready to fight – Lost my phone
he replied,

Check the bathroom, she said.

© puma perl, 4/9/11

Yippie: TAX TIME Poetry & Performance

Yippie Museum Cafe
9 Bleecker, bet. Bowery & Elizabeth
New York, NY

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Created By Puma Perl, Maux Kelly Nolan

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More Info TAX TIME or WHY IS THIS NIGHT DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER NIGHTS!!!!

BECAUSE BIG MIKE IS HOSTING NOT ONE, NOT THREE, BUT SIX, COUNT THEM, SIX!!!! GOURGEOUS GIRLS!!!!!!!

Modest donation of $2 to the Yippie Cafe - support the space!
...
No alcohol, but coffee, tea and random desserts are available! ....VERY Limited OPEN MIC - Sign Up early!

Poetry, Performance, Music, and More!

Featuring the Beautiful, Amazing:

AIMEE DELONG - a writer of fiction and poetry and other random, yet intensely justifiable nonsense. She technically lives in Brooklyn, although theoretically lives in Manhattan. Her work can be seen in such places as 3 AM, Thieves Jargon, and Everyday Genius. It can also actually be seen in these places. She won a poetry prize, and that was awesome. Although it's starting to be far enough in the past that it would be silly to say anymore about it. Life lessons include, but are not limited to: A shit-tastic year makes for grand lucidity. There's more to this bio than meets the eye here www.aimeedelong.com

FAUX MAUX. Lifetime performance artist/actress/ playwright and writer, she took her one-woman play, Lil' Red and few burlesque acts to Holland and Scotland. Now, she does the occasional stand-up and continues to create plays, perform outragous acts of art, and creative havoc here in New York City.

JEANANN VERLEE is a poet, editor, and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and winks at boys. Author of “Racing Hummingbirds,” recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Poetry, her work also appears in The New York Quarterly, FRiGG, kill author, and PANK, among others. Verlee has twice been nominated for a Puschart Prize, is Poetry Editor for Union Station Literary Magazine, serves as curator of the Urbana Poetry Slam reading series at Bowery Poetry Club, and is an acclaimed performance poet with a variety of local and national poetry slam tiles. She lives in New York City with a pair of origami lovebirds. She believes in you.

LAURA DINNEBEIL has appeared on Comedy Central, and has had her poetry published by several universities and poetry journals. Her non-fiction prose has appeared in NYPress. Tonite she will perform her new one-woman play,"The Adventures of Mademoiselle How Many Times," a new work that is coming to a NY venue soon. It's a comedy about American terrorism.

PUMA PERL – Poet/Writer/Performance Artist/Producer/Curator and co-creator of DDAY Productions and this event - author of the recently released book "knuckle tattoos," the award winning chapbook "Belinda and Her Friends," widely published in journals and anthologies, internationally! Creator of 6 Minutes and Cut and many other pieces!

AND...SPECIAL FEATURETTE, ALL THE WAY FROM OKLAHOMA.....

BABS MARTIN! She's a poet, lyricist, and musician from San Diego, CA via Oklahoma. She has just released her third internationally acclaimed CD of Babs Martin and The Trip, “Psychodelic Circus.”

BIG MIKE is the author of 2 books, 81 Pounds and Sibling Rivalry and appears in the anthology One Millimeter, all published by Pretty Pollution Press. Big Mike is known for his performance art and was awarded Best Neptune in the 2004 Mermaid Parade in Coney Island.

http://www.yippiemuseum.org/

Poem #8/30 Found Poem/Weird Pantoum

FOUND POEM/ WEIRD PANTOUM
(created from email sent by the one who wasn’t the one)

I’m patient, probably to a fault
Denial never stopped a drum beat
Someone’s making the world’s best pizza
Someone’s running with a bag of doughnuts

Denial never stopped a drum beat
Black collared jacket in a steel doorway
Someone’s making the world’s best pizza
My room faced southeast, right at you

Someone’s running with a bag of doughnuts
Let’s pretend to meet for coffee
Black collared jacket in a steel doorway
Coats open, jeans at our ankles

Let’s pretend to meet for coffee
Someone’s making the world’s best pizza
Denial never stopped a drum beat
I’m patient, probably to a fault

© puma perl, 4/8/11

Poem 7/30 Erasure Poem from the Road

I decided to return to Rachel McKibbens April 1 prompt to create an erasure poem from a page torn out of The Road. I used all the words left, and no additional words, but not in a particular order.

ERASURE POEM FROM THE ROAD
(prompt 27, Rachel McKibbens http://rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com/)

burning city
country river
just as I conceived
it to be

the boy
the common beast
the dead snakes

no remedy
cold hard edges
exposed
on hillside grounds

rose rock
whispered
and left
a lost moon
in blackness

© puma perl, 4/7/11

Poem #5/30 BINGO

"Faced with such paradoxes, most of us choose to accept the default
setting that makes life easiest, while reducing our exposure to
ridicule. " prompt sent by Rob Plena Irizarry


BINGO

The boys hissed fat ass, fat ass at me all summer long.

Once, I drew the winning BINGO card, but I stayed in my seat staring
at my dirty ripped white Keds while they called out my numbers.

O64. N23. B7.

Fat ass. Fat ass. Fat ass.

The prize was in a gift-wrapped box.

I wanted it badly, but my short shorts made my ass look even fatter.

I could not walk across that room.

Eventually, they gave up searching for the prize winner.

The counselor probably kept it for herself.

It took some time to learn that my big lovely ass was a gift,
greater than the other girls’ skinny legs and straight hair.

© puma perl, 4/5/11

Poem #4 - An Erasure Poem

An Erasure Poem is a poem where you take a text, any text, black out or erase all of the words you don't want, and build a poem from what's left.
This poem was built from an article in the AAA Car & Drive magazine about games to play on the road when your radio breaks. The last time my radio broke on the road, I fixed it by banging the console with a hammer. Eventually, I broke the console.

Erasure Poem from AAA Car & Travel

Radio road trips
My little sister imagines music

We set out
on an overnight drive

Pass the time
Reminisce
Plan the future

Leave a void

Things to say
run out

Forever to cross
Virginia

A simple game
we played as kids

Whizzed by the dial

Going to a picnic
talk about food

Games
Memory

Banana and asparagus

A virtual menu

Whoever uncovers the chain
Wins

© puma perl, 4/4/11

Poem #3 Pantoum for Love

No 30/30 would be complete withoout a pantoum.

Pantoum for love

Do you love me? Do you love me?
Did I ever say I didn’t?
No, but I thought you couldn’t.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

Did I ever say I didn’t?
Perhaps while I was sleeping?
No, but I thought you couldn’t.
I drank ginger tea with honey.

Perhaps while I was sleeping?
I forgot to change the sheets.
I drank ginger tea with honey.
They stuck and smelled of you.

I forgot to change the sheets.
And I didn’t do the laundry.
They stuck and smelled of you.
A little like my father.

And I didn’t do the laundry.
I finished all the soda.
A little like my father.
I’ll buy you some tomorrow.

I finished all the soda.
Don’t know why I’m always thirsty.
I’ll buy you some tomorrow.
Do you think we’ll be together?

Don’t know why I’m always thirsty.
Your name sticks to my tongue.
Do you think we’ll be together?
For as long as we are breathing.

Your name sticks to my tongue.
I wish that I could change it.
For as long as we are breathing,
Do you love me? Do you love me?

© puma perl, 4/3/11

Poem #2 Romeo's Poem

ROMEO’S POEM

remember
we are nothing

more

nothing more than visitors

eyes meet
softly
in the big chair

learn the word for mommy

just a bunch of letters

love is your finger
wrapped around my rings

you still don’t know
where you end
and space begins

soon,
you will smile
across your shoulder

and race through
the world

© puma perl, 4/2/11

Poem #1 - Borderline

OK I am going to do the 30/30 for National Poetry Month - it's sort of a ritual; by May 1 I will have at the end have 30 pieces, and I will actually like a couple of them.
I haven't been writing much poetry, mostly prose and performance pieces, so these poems may be weird. This is the first one.

BORDERLINE

April again
A poem a day.

Madonna’s stuck in my head

Borderline
Borderline

Suddenly, Borderline
is the most meaningful piece of work
I have ever encountered

You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline

I surrender.
Never will I write a line so concise,
so powerful, so revealing…

Something in the way you love me won’t let me be

Yes!
Who needs couples counseling?
Who needs therapy?

Chubby, sleazy, social climbing Madonna has saved me!

The only problem is that Madonna no longer exists,
she’s morphed into an anorexic children’s book writing anglophile
stealing African kids sweeter than her own home-grown sociopaths…

Borderline feels like I’m going to lose my mind

Borderline
Borderline

I never crossed over,
still worship trash and tackiness
and the memory of teen-age Madonnas
wandering malls in black lace and fingerless gloves
dreaming of Danceteria while the real Madonna
cruised Avenue D with her windows wide open

Something in your eyes is makin such a fool of me

Borderline
Borderline
Borderline

© puma perl, 4/1/11