99 Degrees by Puma Perl

It’s 99 degrees, 99 degrees
Street heat, Avenue B beat
99 Degrees
 
Nino’s in the doorway
Nowhere else to go
Hopes somebody passes by
No dope, no hope, it’s late July
 
And it’s 99 degrees
Nino whispers out loud
Streets are hot
feed off dead souls
who walk here
He says it loud
 
Nino’s in the doorway
Making up a poem
Don’t matter for the moment
That there’s nowhere to call home
 
It’s 99 degrees
Hot on the street
Arms are melting
In the searing red heat
 
Nino stands up
Talking to the air
It’s 99 degrees
Bloody tracks glare
Dope fiends wear white
Dealers out of sight
They all went swimming
In a foreign land
Ocean’s brick horizons
Coney Island sand
 
It’s 99 degrees
Please god he cried
Reciting on the cop line
Or dopesick on the step
At the bodega buying beer
Nino’s poem was all they’d hear
 
It’s 99 degrees
It’s 99 degrees
Tracks glare
on burnt skin
The drug dealers went swimming
Beaches lie in foreign lands
Please God
It’s 99 degrees

Photo credit goes to Dina Regine.

Puma Perl is a widely published poet and writer, as well as a performer and producer. She 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.) She is the creator, curator, and producer of Puma’s Pandemonium, which launched at the Bowery Electric in 2012 and brings spoken word together with rock and roll. As Puma Perl and Friends, she performs regularly with a group of excellent musicians. She’s received two honorable mentions and one first place award 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; she lives and works on the Lower East Side.