Appearing in Issue No. 6 with two additional poems, this poem carries the following epigraph before the title of the poem:

We didn’t have even a single guarani in order to buy medicine and even less with which to get to the city….  He lost the ability to speak.  When he died his flesh was like a wet rag, wrapped around and stuck to his bones.
    
   — Paraguayan widow whose husband was employed by Delta & Pine Land Company — in the disposal of contaminated cottonseed
 

Delta & Pine Land Company

By Sharon Kouros

… and he lived inside his eyes only,
with dim disinterest following her at times
while she wet a cloth and wiped the mucus
from his tongue and he tried
for the moisture.  It hurt
when she washed him but he could not say
stop leave me in my filth
which is what I am
while the fire gathered about his feet
and the sword drove between his ribs
and she wiped his running shit
from his falling skin
and the world closed down
to one square light from a far window
and his bones grew beautiful
beneath his ragged flesh, and she saw
the long skeleton of love beneath her hands
as she turned him in his last sleep.