{"id":255,"date":"2018-08-05T01:46:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T01:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=255"},"modified":"2018-07-24T01:51:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T01:51:33","slug":"three-poems-by-robert-perchan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/08\/05\/three-poems-by-robert-perchan\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems by Robert Perchan"},"content":{"rendered":"
Robert Perchan\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cThe Neoplastic Surgeon\u201d 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<\/a>.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Atheogony<\/h3>\n

Why do trees have bark? So our archaic ascendants wouldn\u2019t think of furniture when they climbed them. Trees, quite understandably, want to stay trees. But this worked for only an eon or two \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Horse’s Mouth<\/h3>\n

The Last Straw Man was the last because we had run out of straw.\u00a0 Sure, you could use plastic drinking straws, and we tried that.\u00a0 We even experimented with glass pipettes.\u00a0 But the results were so\u00a0 .\u00a0 .\u00a0 \u00a0inauthentic.\u00a0 <\/em>Straw is straw, there\u2019s no getting around it.\u00a0 So for kickers we sat the Last Straw Man on the swayback of a Stalking Horse and gave the horse\u2019s behind a slap.\u00a0 Giddyap!\u00a0 The Stalking Horse only looked back over its shoulder with longing at the Last Straw Man and whinnied petulantly.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Other sources contend the beasts ate only Red Herring Platters.\u00a0 That, and steaming bowls of Mare\u2019s Nest Soup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hack Sonnet<\/h3>\n

Dead Colonel! Where now you lie
\nstaring me straight back in the eye
\nafter the long struggle last night
\nwhen in its midst my wits took flight
\nand scattered on the field of battle
\nand abandoned you \u2013 O empty bottle
\nof Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight
\nBourbon Whiskey \u2013 to your Fate:
\ntrash basket casket in a corner,
\nmy hangover your sole mourner.
\nI scour the closet for your label
\nto set a full bird back on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Perchan\u2019s 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\u2019s Chorea: Eros and Exile (Watermark … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-47","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}