Pacific Theatre

by Rebecca Newth

On the worst day we received a letter for me
after the immediate death on Okinawa
and the letter said Hi Becky you must be a big girl
by now. And it enclosed a hula skirt

of rope seeming to be made of
grasses, but by now I was thinking fast,

the oldest child of a family of automobile workers
in Lansing, Michigan.

Here we have another note and
some shoes made of more grass
for you, they said, and some mail
from Hawaii or somewhere.

What they hoped was that I would go away
to mull by myself over whitewashed porch rails
outdoors while they talked about the beginning
of you of your body and the end.