Strike, rub, crumple—rip paper into shreds:
you can make confetti form a quick orange
blossom before it collapses to the ground.
At night, a driver misses a curve and plows
through the wall into a neighbor’s dining room;
twice a day, another neighbor breaks apart
ice with a pick, and her horses dip their heads
into the tub. At dawn, branches scrape,
like rough flint, against the window;
where I gaze, a woman once threw a shuttle
back and forth through the alternating sheds
at her loom, and that sound was a needle
sparking through emptiness. Last night,
as sleet hit the skylight, we moved from
trough to crest to radiating wave: even as
shrapnel litters the ground, as a car flips
and scatters bright shards of CDs into the grass.
Selected from Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press 2015)