Nelson Barr's poem is a short, intense address to a lover, and it reads like a string of commands. The speaker asks the beloved to "comb fragility" from her hair, as if to shed softness and vulnerability. Her body is then described in hard, cold terms: "white steel breasts" that break through the "silvered glass" of a mirror's surface. She seems powerful, almost untouchable, and a little unreal.
The speaker's own feeling is surrender. He wants her mouth to carry him "over rooftops of rain," which suggests lift, drift, and release. The last request is the strangest: "nail me / to a cross of down." Pain and tenderness meet in that image, since down is feathery and soft, yet a cross implies sacrifice. Judging by this, the speaker sees love as both ecstasy and a kind of willing suffering.
The mood is dreamlike and charged, cool on the surface but full of longing. The slashes break the lines abruptly, like quick breaths.