Komunyakaa packs this poem with specific visual details, building each line on the previous one and leading the reader toward the next line. While establishing the setting in the opening lines, the speaker hints that the poem has roots in Komunyakaa’s own home state of Louisiana with the reference to “a can of Jax” (Line 1), a beer produced in New Orleans. The speaker gives the reader the first indication of the father’s blue-collar job in the second line, in which the older man “com[es] home from the mill” (Line 2). Komunyakaa introduces the poem’s primary subject in Line 3: upon arriving home from work, the father would “ask me to write a letter to my mother.” Combined with the title, this line provides the reader with the poem’s plot. The speaker’s father is unable to write and must rely on his son to pen love letters to his estranged wife, all of which contain apologies for his abusive behavior. The speaker’s role as writer provides him with a degree of superiority; instead of demanding the son write these letters, the speaker’s father uses the humbler word “ask” (Line 3).

The speaker immediately complicates the portrait he presents in the opening lines when he introduces the mother as someone “Who sent postcards of desert flowers / Taller than men” (Lines 4-5).