Summary

In “Garden of Eden,” the speaker longingly remembers a store in Brooklyn they used to visit after therapy. They would buy fruit and do “bank-balance math” as the sun set (5).

“The Angels” opens with an image of the panicked speaker in a motel room while two leather-clad bikers play cards. The speaker hopes some angels would be “straight up thugs” who bring faith into question (6). That was the speaker’s only brush with angels, but they see hints of the divine in nature and in their mother’s whispering at the end of her life.

In “Hill Country,” God comes down from the cabin in the hills where he goes for time alone. He passes through sunshine and growth, but also hunting and death. He gets out of his jeep and looks out over a dry canyon, almost able to “believe...