Poem of the Week by Molly Tenenbaum

For practice, let something stay broken,

the faucet's drip keep you waking.

Keep on paying insurance though the car won't go,
don't fix it,
dead on the street, gray and flaking.

Let it keep, unmended, something small-
the cat's arthritic knee-
she's getting used to it after all.

The bird bath frost cracked left blue shards in the garden-
Well, they were pretty, weren't they?
Cutting in summer
fingers at work in the larkspur.

Even the path
to Piper's Creek, all fall a shower of gold,
and in the old orchard, the copper-brown, penny-sized pears.

Today, an orange barrier-strip, and the sign says
Path Closed, the storm, a raw sewage flow.

Let them never clear it. Let last week's
have been the last walk there, back on that day

so windy, so bright-edged
and beam-struck, it was impossible
to sit down or stop or look up.

Molly Tenenbaum is one of the poets participating in the 2012 Get Lit! Festival. The above poem comes from her recently released collection, The Cupboard Artist. She will be part of the Friday morning panel "From Vinegar Bottles to Verse: Discovering Poetry in Overlooked Objects" at SFCC and will be reading her work at the Poetry Salon later that night. Click here for more information about Molly.