Sorry to reply on your post, I wish perlmonks had a way to anonymously reply to postings, but I haven't found it yet.

Anyway, Coro::AnyEvent::poll *is* the right function, and it does work fine on my box.

The output is this:

first
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
second
73246
second
first
second
second
second
second
second

The problem the original poster likely runs into is his use of CORE::select - this function blocks the process for half a second each time it's called, so LWP needs long time to make progress, because it can only do something twice a second.