From the collection And Don’t Come Back, 2021.
Sidewalk Equations
You look out the window and
you calculate the algebra
of rot-in-process
you observe the performance of variables
in regard to
a chattel exiled and banished
in other words
You look out the window and
you wonder
how long will it take
for that broken-down sofa left on the curb
to disintegrate
if no one ever hauls it away?
9/17/20
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
https://www.theboxplymouth.com/blog/art/george-shaw-the-local-from-coventry-to-the-world. Lovely coincidence
I had to laugh. Abandoned sofas are universal, I think. I am guilty of wanting to abandon one myself, when my son moved out years ago, we had saved an old sofa in the basement for years anticipating he’d need it. We got it to his apartment and it could not make the bend in the hallway in his apartment. So we were left with a useless sofa streetside. And had returned the moving van. Luckily it fit into our minivan. We hauled it back home. Next day, on the curb (with the correct tag attached for municipal pickup). Sigh. Now, as to this exhibit, I am interested in the fact there are no people, and yet they are present, though maybe not presenting themselves very well, through their left-behind objects. I see this in my own city. In fact, it is a source of a lot of interesting thinking for me. Why, when, what has happened here? Thank you for the link.
Fabulous exhibition all from the artists return to his familial home, on a social housing estate, to nurse his mother until her death, his father having predeceased her. Paintings of everything familiar to him as he was growing up. Knowing that when a tenant dies the property must be vacated within 28 days and he could never return to the house again and would have no need to visit that area again, however close to his heart it was.
Ha ha! I was just having that thought this morning as I drove past a cane work sofa that has been sitting on the roadside all summer long. This thing has fortitude.
Yes. Sometimes I start to like them for it though usually seeing things dumped roadside really upsets me.