Robert Perchan’s poetry chapbooks are Mythic Instinct Afternoon (2005 Poetry West Prize) and Overdressed to Kill (Backwaters Press, 2005 Weldon Kees Award). His poetry collection Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light won the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize and was published by Pearl Editions in 2000. His avant-la-lettre flash novel Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile (Watermark Press, Wichita, 1991) was translated into French and published by Quidam Editeurs (Meudon) in 2002. In 2007 his short short story “The Neoplastic Surgeon” won the on-line Entelechy: Mind and Culture Bio-fiction Prize. He currently resides in Pusan, South Korea. You can see some of his stuff on robertperchan.com.
Atheogony
Why do trees have bark? So our archaic ascendants wouldn’t think of furniture when they climbed them. Trees, quite understandably, want to stay trees. But this worked for only an eon or two – until those hominid ancestors of ours stumbled upon tiny tchotchke shelves sprouting from the bole of a great oak like fungus. Now we have a world of sofas squatting on curbs waiting to be toted off by couch junkies in pickups. Treehouses may provide a compromise — what with Hybridity all the rage these days. Children lift themselves up into them and jabber down at us like chimps. If we bring them food and empty their waste buckets they might stay up there forever. As we learn to fill this niche and grow step by step more servile and imbecilic, we may one day come to revere these lovable Hanuman pranksters inhabiting the eaves of our forests as Gods.
The Horse’s Mouth
The Last Straw Man was the last because we had run out of straw. Sure, you could use plastic drinking straws, and we tried that. We even experimented with glass pipettes. But the results were so . . inauthentic. Straw is straw, there’s no getting around it. So for kickers we sat the Last Straw Man on the swayback of a Stalking Horse and gave the horse’s behind a slap. Giddyap! The Stalking Horse only looked back over its shoulder with longing at the Last Straw Man and whinnied petulantly. Xenophon, I think it was, wrote of the flesh-eating horses of Diomedes, tyrant of Thrace, slain by Hercules in his Eighth Labor and fed to those selfsame horses. Other sources contend the beasts ate only Red Herring Platters. That, and steaming bowls of Mare’s Nest Soup.
Hack Sonnet
Dead Colonel! Where now you lie
staring me straight back in the eye
after the long struggle last night
when in its midst my wits took flight
and scattered on the field of battle
and abandoned you – O empty bottle
of Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight
Bourbon Whiskey – to your Fate:
trash basket casket in a corner,
my hangover your sole mourner.
I scour the closet for your label
to set a full bird back on the table.