Puma Perl

It Could Have Been Love

 

Two lost people

feel found

It must mean

they are meant to be

 

They both like

eating breakfast at Odessa’s,

backs to the wall

 

Sausage and eggs,

burnt home fries, rye toast

 

They buy Zanzibar coffee

from the same shop on St Mark’s Place

 

Their bedrooms

are painted a shade

they call “Burroughsian” Green

 

They once had the same drug of choice

Both claim to be clean

 

One of them is lying

 

But all is forgivable

by the touch of a hand

on a black leather collar

in a steel doorway

on Fourth Street

 

He sends her letters

 

We both

have to take off

our sunglasses

at some point,

he writes,

because this is beautiful

and I don’t want

to miss any of it

 

She fails to respond

because bad luck

and worse judgment

have landed her face down

in the Avenue B snow

hands cuffed behind her back,

a torn gray glove

left behind

 

Zanzibar coffee

Sausage and eggs

Odessa’s

and green bedrooms

proved not enough

to slay monsters

even when

it could have been love.

 

Puma Perl is a poet, writer, and performer and is the author of two chapbooks, Ruby True and Belinda and Her Friends, and three full-length poetry collections, knuckle tattoos, Retrograde (great weather for MEDIA), and Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque Books.) Her band, Puma Perl and Friends, brings spoken word together with rock and roll and has performed together since 2012. She’s received four awards from the New York Press Association in recognition of her journalism and was the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing. In May of 2021, she curated and performed in four shows as part of the HOWL Happening! Artist in Residence program. In 2022, she was honored to read at the Whitney Biennial, New York City.