The poem opens with a striking picture: a "perfect god in high heels" slipping on a frosty street. The title, "Drag," suggests performance and costume, but it also hints at something being pulled along or weighed down. Right away we see grandeur and clumsiness in the same body, and the poem seems to enjoy that clash.
The next lines drift into more uncertain ground. Our "usual hands founder" and are "lost at land," as if ordinary skills fail us when we need them, like sailors stranded on dry ground. The speaker then talks about doubts "made of jest" that might be offered up as a sacrifice, which suggests that joking can be a way of hiding fear, and that we might finally give it up. The last lines, about a tailor's mother tongue, point to something made or stitched together, and to the idea that nothing surprises a language we've known since birth.
The mood is playful but a little uneasy, funny and tender at once. The poem's logic is loose, so it's best read as a series of images rather than a story.