Book Release Party

My book release party for "Birthdays Before and After" was held December 3, 2019, at Lady Stardust, 25 Avenue A.

Artwork, Chelle Mayer, Cover design Dennis Doyle

Birthdays Before and After

My fifth solo collection, "Birthdays Before and After," was published by Beyond Baroque Books in 2019. Edited by Iris Berry, founder of Punk Hostage Press and noted writer and LA punk icon. Introduction by Kat Georges, co-founder of Three Rooms Press, writer/poet/playwright.

Artwork Chelle Mayer, Cover Design, Dennis Doyle

It’s Puma Perl’s New York City, the street stoops and Coney Island, the heartbreaks, the heroin, the ghosts of Haring and the Chelsea Hotel. Like Jim Carroll born a woman, maybe, or Lou Reed with a keener grasp of the written word, her writing is as skillful as it is scary and wonderful. Makes startling poetics of the day-to-day, the big beats and saxophones and rush of subways. All the themes—isolation, sobriety, death, self-reflection, weddings and birthdays—are inescapable and ferocious in her hands. They’re earned words, so beautifully bent you could wear them as jewelry. —Brian Smith, author of Spent Saints and Tucson Salvage-Tales and Recollections of La Frontera

To the edgy, illustrious ranks of poets like Diane DiPrima and Charles Bukowski, let us now add the fearless, delirious genius of Puma Perl. Long a cult legend and staple of the Lower East Side poetry scene, with “Birthdays Before and After,” she steps forward and cements her place as 21st Century visionary and unsparing chronicler of the human condition. Anyone who cares about phenomenal writing and one-of-a-kind breathtaking lines on the page needs to read this book. Puma Perl is nothing short of a national treasure living in our midst. And “Birthdays” is a jewel. 

Jerry Stahl, Novelist, Memoirist, Screenwriter

According to William Carlos Williams there are “no ideas but in things;” Puma Perl’s “Birthdays Before and After” is filled with things, objects and places that deliver profound ideas through her New York voice, glowing like the moon and streetlight ricocheting across the bright surfaces of the dark city. Her lively characters fashion vignettes in these often-narrative poems, so that reading this book feels like a glitch in the universe, similar to the one in “Being John Malkovich”; the book is a portal that invites you right into the head of the author to see, feel, hear and touch through her body, this body of work. You can taste the asphalt and see the stars in these poems that are slices of an extraordinary, ordinary life. Her words deliver to the senses her unique sense, a grit and wisdom that informs her expert eye. The book leaves you on the floor with a memory box spilled around you, describing snapshots of how humanity endures through loss and chaos.

-Jane LeCroy, Poet and Educator

 Available from Beyond Baroque Books, from the author (contact me at pumaperl@mail.com for direct orders to individuals) and Amazon.

https://smile.amazon.com/Puma-Perl/e/B003VODDBK?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000

Pandemonium Posters

I've gotten behind on this blog again. The next Puma Perl's Pandemonium will be on January 17, 2020.
More information to come.
These are posters from the last 3 Pandemoniums.
April Pandemonium, artwork by Justin Booth.
June Pandemonium, artwork/photography by Robert Butcher
September Pandemonium, Artwork Chelle Mayer
All poster design by Dennis Doyle

Gutter Angels Song and Poems

I've been performing this song along with a poem also titled Gutter Angels.
There is also a collaboration between singer/songwriter Joe Sztabnik and myself.

Gutter Angels

Angels on the subway train

Angels in the rain

Wings of fury in the street

Halos melting in the heat

Gutter Angels up in heaven

Looking down upon us all.

Bless the homeless, Bless the dope fiends,

Bless the sidewalks where they fall

You’ll be an angel too, someday,

Shooting arrows till you stumble

Flying by as oceans rise

While all our bridges crumble

Gutter Angels up in heaven

Looking down upon us all.

Bless the homeless, Bless the dope fiends,

Bless the sidewalks where they fall.

Danny’s nickname was “Guerrilla,”

Linda’s was “The Stick,”

Tito climbed through windows

Minerva made him pay

Lenny popped the car trunks

All on Christmas Day

Dream yourself alive again,

It’s easy, just like waking

Nothing’s changed since you’ve been dead

Except you feel your body aching

Gutter Angels up in heaven

Looking down upon us all.

Bless the homeless, Bless the dope fiends,

Bless the sidewalks where they fall

© puma perl, 07/07/19

It was adapted from a poem called "Angels," written 9/24/13

Angels

Hi Angel.

You always greet me the same way.

Do you know why angels become angels?

Because they were such shitty people.

Only their wings could save them.

Candy built a treehouse, dropped a few kids.

Anna rode the trains, her daughter died, too.

Lucy stole her mother’s wedding ring,

Tommy took the cash. Robert ran off

with Lucy, Tommy stabbed him in the chest.

Angels up in heaven, smiling down upon us all.

Bless the homeless bless the dope fiends,

bless the sidewalks where they fall.

Future angels walk city streets

restless on the corners

You’ll be an angel too, someday,

shooting arrows into clouds,

watching the ocean rise

and bridges crumble.

Dreaming of being alive again,

just like breathing.

Danny’s nickname was “Guerrilla,”

Linda’s was “The Stick,” Tito

climbed through windows, Minerva

pushed him out, Lenny popped the car

trunks, all on Christmas Day

Angels up in heaven, smiling down upon us all.

Bless the homeless bless the dope fiends,

bless the sidewalks where they fall.

©  puma perl, 09/24/13

 Additionally, I have a poem titled "Gutter Angles" in my book, "Birthdays Before and After" published August, 2019. The poem was written June 4, 2018.

Gutter Angels

We meet out by the airport

in some low-rent hotel in Queens

It’s easy to get lost

on dark streets

that lead nowhere

except to low-rent hotels

out by the airport

so anonymous

you’ll never find them again

As always, you’re ambivalent,

not sure if you really want

me or him or maybe some girl

out in New Jersey

Even low-rent hotels

cost more than we’re worth

Inevitably

we move to cars

parking alongside fire hydrants,

across from city playgrounds,

hiding impotently

beneath trees

Watching you unzip

is the best part

We don’t believe in afterward

A laugh

Share the last drops

of whiskey

from the half pint bottle

under the seat

Drop me on the corner

Hope the security guard’s

asleep

There are no angels here

on Water Street

Just a few seraphim,

invisible to most,

lying quietly

in the gutter.

©  puma perl, 06/04/18