You watch her fingers leave your robe how they arc in the air
    to papers on her desk, and you realize that at various times
    in the past five years you have thought of her fingers, their short
    nails, and how she called you and said into the mouth of her
            phone,
    really as an afterthought, that in the site of the malignancy we
            found
    a little milk. A little she said, like the purr of a cat…

Shapiro’s poem — believe it or not, her first publication — lazes as she lays its sweet trap. Stroll through the cancer clinic and it might be heaven, beautifully light and airy, everything haloed. The workers are shepherrdesses and sirens; the chemotherapy suite is a skylight; flowers bloom in gold vases over plush gold carpet. The poem reveals itself slowly, deliberately, lingering on each empyrean image. Only deep into the poem do we realize the vision’s source is the chemotherapy, that we’re seeing Sloan-Kettering through the haze of painkillers. The trap is sprung and we’re forced to feel the full weight of maternal longing embodied in that delicate phrase, a little milk. A little, representing so much loss.