APO 96225 phone home.

I loved this poem. The point of the poem just smacks you in the face as soon as you read it, and after reading The Things They Carried, I am able to understand the poem quite well. The mom says that she wants to know what is really going on with her son. He keeps trying to sugar-coat his situation for her, but she insists that he tell the truth. Once he does, she gets upset and he starts to lie again. This is rather ironic. She thinks that she wants to know, but I think she really wants him to say that he isn't lying and that it actually isn't that bad where he is. The boy should understand this, and he does at the beginning, but he eventually gives in.
This poem uses that irony to show the disconnection between the families of soldiers and the soldiers themselves. The soldiers were experiencing things that they never thought were possible, and the families had no idea how truly bad it was. This poem shows that they didn't want to know either.