Bio
Robert Perchan's latest books are the comic futuristic novella Tropic of Scorpio (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2022) and Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems and Prose Poems (UnCollected Press, 2021). His poetry collection Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light won the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize and was published by Pearl Editions in 2000. Bob continues to eat and drink and write in Busan, South Korea, under the bemused gaze of his translator wife, Mi-kyung Lee.
Robert Perchan
Eruditio Et Religio
On his desk beneath a square
sheet of glass lay a postcard
of a naked maiden embraced
from behind by a skeleton,
its bony white hands upon
her pubis: my freshman
year faculty advisor in
his office and oblivious
to my callow awkwardness
during our full ten minute
"conference," staring out
the window at the coeds
crisscrossing the quad
("Eruditio et Religio" is the motto of Duke University.)