Written in the wake of the poet’s mother’s Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, The Things tackles not only the keen anticipation of grief and loss but also its arrival and aftermath. These lyrical and searingly direct poems navigate through the empty spaces left behind by death and chart a path from sorrow back into the physical world. Oaks, the author of Little What (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2019), captures and honors his mother’s irrepressible personality while recounting his own process of inheriting and letting go of her things .