HoopDance

“Old woman, where is it? Give it up!”
You crouch saying nothing.
“Nothing?” One soldier ravishes
a green crust jaded with mold,
your answer, from the
small box of your body.

Like opals your eyes alarm them.
Faces consume your last moments,
but soldiers cannot devour
your miserable crust,
or your tears not different from
diamonds, or wind
that curls snail-like in each ear.

You breathe once. Still they find
nothing. Jewels in your cupboard,
gems in plain sight sparkle.
“You are wasting your time,” you say.
Armpit, breast, wrist, crotch,
eyelid, pulse, and pelvis are
pregnant with your secrets.

One brainy pearl mothered inside
your shell, wheels of blood,
the liver a garnet hub,
intestines that gust in weighty
rhythm; thus your heart keeps
time with sighs. The soldiers
at last synchronize.

One hand knots podlike lungs
with silence. Outside snow
dissolves into a white buzz only
soldiers hear now. Their hearts
counting down time yours lost, white
drifts ticking from bone of what was
once your house.

© Version 2007 Val Morehouse. All Rights Reserved.

poetry

Tornado watch.
Hot air riding up and over
stillness. The horizon
bends like a lens and darkens
to the color of your eyes.

My skin gives up
whirling leaves of scent
to imprint a funnel of sheets.
Your body
rises over me.

Wind bends with the sound of
ripe wheat, your breath weaving my hair.
Let your hands cover my body
the way rain sweeps a landscape.
At my feet the rippling starts

Bones undulating. Spines snap,
My thigh becomes a harp playing the weather.
My nipples lift like the cloud tops. Stop.
Now. Stop now. Or run
for cover.

In a hail of kisses I turn my face
twisting into the sound of your heart.
Thunder let me be
Rent asunder to receive each
melting secret,

The way earth weeps, every
crevice inundated and swept
away in this devastation of
touches until nothing is left
but the rainbow.

© Version 2006 Val Morehouse. All Rights Reserved.

poetry

Roughnecks pound the ground like a drum.
Pumps snout in the mud. A dirge of cables hums,
and needling gauges like buzzard tracks witch
for earth-dark blood.

Seeking some faint sulphur heartbeat this
necromancer’s derrick full of men black as crows,
stabs at the graveyard of ancient tree and sweet fern
like steel rain on a coffin.

Over cold bones of dinosaurs
they work an incantation for
shale waxy with crude,
plunging bit after bit into the casings,

Grinding diamond and everything else into a sauce
of greed and desire until it erupts into light,
a slippery fishskin rainbow
sheen only death and oil give up.

© Version 2006 Val Morehouse. All Rights Reserved.

poetry

Nearly every Jewish Holiday has its special treats, and Shavuot, with its tasty cheese blintzes, is no exception. But what if a family is too poor to buy the ingredients? When Mama comes up with a foolproof plan to earn money enough to buy the necessary ingredients in time for the holiday, the problem is solved. Or, is it?

CLICK READINGS to hear A Mountain Of Blintzes, by Barbara Diamond Goldin, read by Val Morehouse.

storytime

In this reading of Eric A. Kimmel’s prizewinning children’s book, Gershon’s Monster, Val Morehouse brings to life the story of Gershon, a selfish man who’s thoughtless behavior returns to haunt him in the most awful way.

Many years ago in the city of Constantsa, on the shores of the Black Sea, lived a man named Gershon with his wife Fayga. Gershon was not always the best person he could be. His sins were not huge ones (he never murdered anyone, for example) but were more the little mistakes of everyday life: a small lie, a lost temper or a broken promise.

Gershon never regretted his lapses, nor did he ever ask for forgiveness. Every Friday, Gershon swept up his mistakes and tossed them into the cellar. Then, on Rosh Hashanah, he put the mistakes in a sack, dragged the sack to the sea and threw it in…Click on Gershon’s Monster under READINGS.