Urban Legend Richard Brautigan Returns from the Hereafter for Three Brief Bows

by Robert Perchan

HOTHOUSE BRUNCH

We were served houseplants in thick-rimmed clay pots with a rich black soil and a gravelly topping. Yukiko was unhappy with her dwarf indica and eyed Richard Brautigan’s succulent sativa with such agitation and longing he agreed to exchange pots. Everyone caressed their leaves and stems and petals to death with their sighs and later we retired to the patio for a couple of spliffs. For the umpteenth time we contended whether Shakespeare’s Caliban was code for “cannibal” or “cannabis.” A chained-up backyard dog barked in the distance as Richard began to stroke Yukiko’s sapling limbs with his meaningful glances. Soon the rest of us found ourselves chaffing one another over whether Venus Fly Traps belonged

a) on the menu

b) starring in vegan porn snuff films

and laughed so hard we all of us at once began to drool.

NEW MILLENNIUM CHIA PET PROJECT

We were breeding a new kind of dog. The females of this new breed had real hussy sexual hair – black, wiry stuff that sprung out provocatively when she lifted her tail and wagged it. My pals and I didn’t know much about pedigrees and dog shows, so we didn’t know how to name this new type. Everything we came up with sounded mildly degrading. And we knew people mainly bought dogs for their kids. Kids love to watch a female dog drop a litter of puppies. It’s a real education for them to hear the word BITCH used without malice and an initiation into Variation Within Species and The Secrets of Natural Selection. Or else they bought them for status. High maintenance trophy pets with a taste for sirloin and bottled water. Meanwhile we discovered that our own customers were strictly bachelor lighthouse-keepers, certain reference room librarians at the Vatican, and a number of mid-western college fraternities. This was our market share. In the end, however, it didn’t much matter. Our competition – that’s Richard Brautigan and his gang -- had gone us one better and bred real human women with dogs’ tails – sleek, high-stepping bipedal babes with temperaments to match their elegance. Our dogs, novel as they were, had already become fashion derelicts, regular dumpster snufflers, love-hungry companions to homeless winos and their depraved hallucinations of a blazing hearth and domestic bliss.

ARS GRATIA ARTIS

Now in this next back alley bolgia on our journey through Hell we came upon a Shade who was dashing sick puppy after sick puppy against a brick wall. With its wild mane and ragged raiment it appeared quite mad but it executed its task with a grim determination.

Aren’t you overdoing it just a little, I called out to it in the darkness.

In the guttering glow of our sconces we saw it was standing in water, knee-deep in black water, water deep enough to drown the puppies in. Still it persisted in its onslaught. It could have been any artist at work in a studio for all the notice it took of us. Soon enough the Ghost of Richard Brautigan took me by the arm and led me further down.

Those puppies, he said, are all the loves who betrayed it in its youth. They felt nothing then and they feel nothing now.

Then what is the point, I protested.

Indeed, he replied, perplexed, as he flipped the page in the Infernal Guidebook. It doesn’t

say.

Robert Perchan is the author of 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-lineEntelechy: Mind and Culture Bio-fiction Prize. He currently resides in Pusan, South Korea.

For more about Robert Perchan, check Jokes Review’s review of his recent book, Tropic of Scorpio.