Least by Jim McDermott

What happens after everyone leaves? Least moves room by room through an emptied house a family once shared, finding in each abandoned object—a wrinkled pillow or a rusted razor—codes about lives no longer there. These poems notice what remains after unexplained exit: light sieved through window shades, dust admixed where fingers once brushed, a daughter’s dress draped beside her mother’s. Written in a radically compressed “drip” line often just one word wide, Least recalls Objectivist tradition where what often matters is precise seeing. But these poems push beyond hyper-realistic perception into wordplay and buried story. What emerges is a family’s household archaeology, carried out with the patience needed to document what can’t be saved. The final poems edge toward erasure, finding corners where light and language reduce to their smallest possible unit. A quiet, exacting, and deeply felt work of minimalism, Least asks how little a poem can hold and still hold everything.