Molly Tenenbaum

What to do with a box of folders,

each tab a noun in her handwriting,
Bristlecone pine, Coulter Pine,
her sketches, Rabbit, Saxifrage,
the box in the closet since she died, 

cubic feet we need for our stuff,
but these unfinished, what to do, her pencil
having been on the page, her hand on the pencil,
her eye on the flower, the seal and seal pups 

in the ocean, the pines in the mountains,
her feet on the trail, the tabs on the folders,
each folder with one or five or a few
sketches or not even a sketch, a line 

smooth or rugged, as far as she got,
her visual dictionary, reference book,
drawn without end her whole life,
the words on the tabs the order 

of thought, alphabetical,
Cattle, Cormorants, Dogs,
and categorical, trees, Yellow Pine, Aspen
Juniper, Oak, but how 

order Aspen 1961, Glen Canyon 1960,
ABC vs. time, some single rough lines,
some intricate drawings, some watercolor,
frameable, do we really need 

that box-shape of space for ourselves,
for what, for something important
like a broken lamp or important
as molecules move, so we might move them, 

write letters on the back or fold
the sketches one at a time into library books,
and before they leave us, enveloped, addressed,
missived to those who check out our same books, 

we’ll scan them and set the preferences
to that album for the screensaver,
keeping just a few on paper—
nettle, otter, monkeyflower—

to glue each year
on the cover of the calendar,
to glue each year
by the index of the bullet book.

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Molly Tenenbaum is the author of four books of poems, most recently Mytheria (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) and The Cupboard Artist (Floating Bridge, 2012). Her chapbook/artist book, Exercises to Free the Tongue (2014), a collaboration with artist Ellen Ziegler, combines poems with archival materials about ventriloquism. Her poems have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, New England Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Her recordings of old-time Appalachian banjo are Instead of a Pony and Goose & Gander. She lives in Seattle, teaching at North Seattle College and Dusty Strings Music School.