NOTE LEFT AT THE TOMB OF SETH EL-MEDINEH: NECROPOLIS, THEBES
Dear Seth,
Now that you are probably facing
the netherworld Tribunal you were so
worried about I just wanted you to know
the mummified Nile crocodile I placed
at the foot of your coffin to bribe
that stony-hearted jackal-headed judge
was in fact a bloated river rat washed up
after last month’s big flood Sorry if I
screwed up your eternity of an Afterlife
but maybe now you will think twice
before you do that to a woman ever again
Cheers,
Meskhenet
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.