the catalonian review

1

A recommendation form arrives in the mail, like a severed ear from kidnappers, with a note saying would I please. . . . Her problems with boyfriends, roommates, bills, a dying grandfather were my problems, too, through midterms and padded term papers, and then spring opened its arms, and what I had taught her was all I would ever teach her, the involved chemistry of bodies dissolving in lime pits and incinerated in ovens. I glance over the form and try to summon her face from the rows of half-remembered faces flickering yellowly like prayer candles. How long have you known the applicant, in what capacity, your candid opinion, and at the bottom space for additional comments that might but won’t save us.

2

The god of my fathers should have been here long ago. I start to imagine the worst – horse thieves, daughters named for characters in soap operas, leaves that whisper to each other, spreading insidious rumors of disloyalty and upheaval – but stop, like a man whose wife ridicules last night’s dream when he attempts to describe it. I can feel the machine lurking in the corner. It stands on two legs, one a bit shorter than the other, and its blades are encrusted with spots, like small, dull eyes. Just then someone bangs on the door. I jump up to open it. He wears a false beard to hide his grin.

3

The TV was broken, but my father kept turning the dial. There was something he wanted to watch that night. At the kitchen table my mother was drawing in her eyebrows. Children I knew from school lurched down the road in the front of our house with suitcases held together by rope. It wasn’t dark, and then it was, and the flames swayed despite the lack of wind. The poet gestured to me to follow him over the high railing of the bridge. I looked around for help. A woman stood on the corner with her hip thrust out. Six years passed in a minute. Such things are true if you believe them.