In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

340 A Face to Meet the Faces Corpus Leslie McGrath If you can bear it so, be dead among the dead. The dead are occupied. —Rainer Maria Rilke After they washed my body and threaded my arms through the sleeves of a dress I’d bought in the thirties in a Cuernavaca market, they looped a rosary around my folded hands. A bloom from the bougainvillea is tucked behind my ear. I am dressed for church; I am beautiful in death. Oh, the perfume of my hands rises from me like prayer. I am gone, yet here I lie waiting for the man to come for me, to wrap and box me, to burn what’s left. Unusable, this brittle spine, these still feet. Unusable, these folded hands, hands that tended, arranged, wiped clean floors cleaner still, hands that chose the melon, sliced and served it, threw out the rind— the unusable rind. ...

Share