Looking Back at First World Behavior in the Apocalypse by Puma Perl

It was all about improvisation.

My shades fell down.
I tucked ruffled checked pillowcases
into the window sills.

A ghetto Scarlett O’Hara.

My left hearing aid broke.
I put the phone on speaker
and used ear buds.
The only one I talked 
to at length, three dimensionally,
was the dog.

A recluse at a younger age than planned.

I started to get used to masks.
It was hard to breathe 
and, glasses always fogging,
even harder to see.

I experimented with dish soap
and eye glass sprays,
left the house regularly
without them, and seemed to see
just as well as before.

Salons were closed;
I cut and dyed my hair,
tweezed my eyebrows,
filed my nails.

All that stuff I never did anyway,
back in the days of cutting real needs
into halves and quarters.

I burned out five car batteries
because I had no place to go.
My apartment walls are dingy
and my intercom rings at night.
The elevator’s always breaking
because the delivery guys 
block the doors on each side.
Amazon boxes line the hallways.
There are fewer deaths
and more arguments.

And it continues.
First world problems in the apocalypse.

Photo by Ellen Berman

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.