She was in mourning for her life,
Masha loved to announce, borrowing a line
from another play. With a swirl of black skirt,

she’d hurl herself into the arms
of an overstuffed chair in the dressing room.
Was it a line you had to be too young to say?

Who knew we’d never hear of that actress again,
who wore out a handkerchief in her grief?
I was handed a wad of shredded silk,

though in that Midwestern Three Sisters
I was the fourth sister, the one in the black clothes
of a stagehand, who hid behind a folding screen

waiting for Olga, the one who taught school.
Out of a corset and into a nightgown
I helped her to change, as if into spinsterhood,

without her missing a cue. There might be a fire
burning in town—she’d call that peace,
for want of a better word. O Iowa City,

Athens of the corn fields! Those young women
stuck in t ...

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