The Minuses by Jami Macarty

It’s always nerve-wracking to read a new book by a friend. What if you don’t like it? So it was a huge relief to love The Minuses, by Jami Macarty, an editor and friend I’ve known for a few years now. The poems in The Minuses are bare and episodic. They use absence and white space to their advantage. The poems are rooted deep in nature, the nature of the desert southwest, and the sparseness of the landscape matches the sparseness on the page. Human and nature blend in a quiet violence. It’s quite beautiful. Buy here.

From the opening untitled poem:

better to live high / in the mountains / in the eye’s aerie / the mind on a roof // the ring in its little box . . .

From “Thin Attachment”

At this hour any god is rain // A woman pulls plastic from a dumpster / holds it up to her body to see if it fits // She inhabits blatantly her wish to be dry // The rain inhabits its falling // My car inhabit the street . . .

From a section-opening untitled poem:

to subtraction // to being taken / and being taken from // to be an integer // a thorn-snagged / single strand of hair . . .