HoopDance

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.

Early summer brings lilies
like lemon drops, or

fallen stars.

Then come Trumpet lilies like pagodas for hummingbirds…

perfume at the heart,

petals like open arms…

And nectar sweet as a kiss.

In tar beach towns roughnecks cast up,
climbing through muck like blackened grease monkeys
between sumps gummy with acrid crude.
Whole families broke down on the nuts and bolts of production,
earning poverty for their trouble and even
sleeping on ground The Company owned.

In heat only a rattlesnake could love and
breeze rank with petroleum funk they stuck
tents and shanties on ditch backs
like burr scabs on a starving dog,
stalking that next whiskey dollar the way
a lover drinks in an embrace.

Oil owned my family.
Its flare offs and blowouts they plowed into
a history of mud and fists and cable
song roaring through crops of derricks,
fields they planted for The Man, rigs
drilled like lightening bolts into the dirt.

Ruts and crushed gravel roads fed acres of hulks
raised from dust devils like some hellish corn
grinding ground day and night for a promise
of moisture, the remembered curl of spring sweet fiddleheads,
for the sound of ancient ocean surf long fallen
into a slurry of shit black dreams.

Until in sulphuric fury the tide turned
gushing back in a rumble of carbon futures,
splits of gas, and diesel, and kerosene
oozing blood of machines,
banking the metallic stink of money into
the sweaty cents of escape.

© Version 2007 Val Morehouse. All Rights Reserved.

It started with a “Boom”! Followed by a long growling rumbling. And just when you thought it would stop, it got jiggy again. An earthquake, 4.2 magnitude. California is famous for this, but I haven’t felt one this size in years. Considering that it was centered only 6 miles from here, and it lasted 15 hip-hopping seconds, it got my attention. As moderate earthquakes go, this one had it all: whole house vibrating; floor jumping up and down; lamps, pictures and walls swaying. And just when you thought it was safe to unfreeze your astonishment to investigate, it starts all over again. Now that is what I call, “Plot! Action!” from Mother Earth. Lest you think all is civilized and normal, SHE will remind you of your relative size and lack of strength in the scheme of nature. Take look at the link below before the USGS removes the map. It shows how far out the motion was felt.

Earthquake Map