Excited to announce that A DIALOGUE WITH GEORGIA O’KEEFFE lll: THE SIMPLE TRUTH OF LIGHT has been selected for the 2022 Monologues & Poetry International Film Fest. Thank you to my creative team, Circling Hawk Productions, and to Morgan Velasquez!!!
The 2022 Monologues & Poetry International Film Fest is pleased to provide a platform for word-based solid performances with the skillful expression of thoughts, emotions, feelings, anxieties, or humor.
Monologues & Poetry International is offering two screening events; a Limited Live Screening event will take place at the Mira Theater Guild in Vallejo, CA, on December 10th, 2022; with a 2-day screening lineup taking place at the Online Private Event on Saturday and Sunday, December 17th & 18th.
https://www.monologuesinternational.com
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Pleased to announce the publication of my poem, “Weather,” included in the anthology Level Land: Poems For and About the I35 Corridor by Craig Hill and Todd Fuller. For sale on November 1st, 2022.
I’m honored and excited to be part of this collection. Get your copy on November 1, 2022 by clicking on the link.
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My poem, “The Juvenile Bear with Gold Earrings,” is now out! Doubly Mad Journal. Summer, 2021.
https://doublymad.org/Doubly-Mad-Journal
THE JUVENILE BEAR WITH GOLD EARRINGS
I.
We
leave strips of trimmed fat
from our pork loins,
along with a discarded Yukon Gold,
laden with generous pats
of sweet cream, salted butter,
and bacon crumbles as we
flee the ashen rain at The Timbers.
The Juvenile Bear with a yellow tag in each ear
swipes the loaded potato
with the skillful agility of a major
league catcher.
Padded paws like mitts, no bone
china is broken.
II.
Poor men scavenge
harvested dirt rows the week before,
gleaning what the Spudnik had not pulled.
Flour sacks heavy with worry and coup,
their tongues click on about the measure of their dogs,
their chickens and their children.
They lift furtive glances toward the red rim
of a distant forest fire that has driven
the bears down the mountain and wonder when
the ferocious raiders will return.
On the dawn of a different day,
a frenzy of hungry bears tore open the belly
of a lame cow. Now shotguns are always loaded,
close at hand, in dusty Ford pickup trucks.
Poor men know what to do with thieves.
III.
The chief chef from Guadalajara at The Timbers
presses his palm against the blade’s back,
opens the tuber as fresh as manioc.
There’s a photo inside his
flaked-leather wallet
of his forever-little-girl
whom he hears is all grown up in Mexico.
There’s talk in the kitchen
of a twelve-year-old whose calf was split open
on the wooded trail just above the tree line
by a mother bear.
The child survived.
Gracias a Dios.
The protective bear.
Dispuesto.
This chef knows survival is the reason he cooks in America.
IV.
A blaze roars in the river stone fireplace
at The Timbers. Crystal water glasses shine
in this warmth. Four inches less snow
this season, hardly worth the price of air.
Seconds before, we were driven
in by the sudden occurrence
of frozen rain. It slashes at the blue
umbrellas.
There’s a sinking into the pleasures
of the hearth, a return to comfort
and the deserved luxury
of buttering warm bread and tipping back wine.
A child’s gleeful alarm shatters this settling.
“Mommy, look. It’s a bear with gold earrings!”
We crowd the windowpane,
admire the brown beauty’s youthful.
agility, a circus performance, a major leaguer
complete with a yellow tag in each ear.
We snapchat smartphone photographs,
take video with the latest generation
of Cinematix apps, and post on our Facebook Live.
Dancing from plate to plate,
the bear devours what is left of our fled feast.
We recognize its utter devotion to pleasure
and its risk of being labeled “bad bear.”
“Without his mother
he no longer remembers
how to be wild,” says
the chef, who’s emerged from
his kitchen to check on the commotion.
“One more tag and he’ll be shot.”
Waitstaff in crisp white uniforms
clap and stomp the bear back
down wet, wooden stairs
where it’s taken residence under the deck.
V.
The bear retreats, but is drawn by the smell
of French fries, burgers, and ketchup as sweet as honey.
Driven by hunger and insatiable desire,
it charges blindly up slippery stairs
where the memory of butter, pork, and potato
glisters brighter than gold and fire.
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New Publication in The Paragon Journal. “Dialogue with Georgia O’Keeffe II :Ghost Ranch,” by Patricia L. Meek
Please follow the link below to read my poem, “Ghost Ranch.”
“Canyon Road Santa Fe.” Photo Credit: Patricia L. Meek, 2018.
https://www.theparagonjournal.com/current-issue
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My new short story release: Hot Springs. Published by CSU SAN BERNARDINO’S Ghost Town Literary Magazine.
http://ghosttownlitmag.com/patriciameek
HOT SPRINGS
Mary Ellen Stahl sat in the back of the old Lincoln, watching the silver Airstream follow behind, quietly pounding her chest so her grandparents wouldn’t hear the sound over the country music station. Of course, they’d already discovered her secret. It was the reason they’d decided to take the long trip from Pine Grove, Texas, to Hot Springs, South Dakota, to cure what they called an infliction with the healing powers of the water there.
The day after Mary Ellen had turned thirteen, she decided she would not grow breasts. Like many of her past birthdays, she celebrated by blowing out the multicolored candles on her frosted cake and by opening her gift. This year, she’d gotten a blue sweater, dotted with tiny rosebuds; “perfect for church” was what Grandmother Kay had said. The next morning while she was still lying in bed, she looked at the sweater draped over the chair and thought about the present her mother would have picked. If it had been a sweater, her mother would have picked red—something tight and fuzzy. She would have said something like: “The more plush, the better to hug,” or “Little Miss Mary, you just wait. You’ll have those boys admiring that figure of yours before too long.”
Mary Ellen was what her mother had affectionately called a late bloomer. Only recently had she noticed that her chest, which had been as flat as a boy’s, was beginning to grow, forming what looked like robin’s eggs. Mary Ellen had stared at the sweater, a size too big, when she imagined the rosebuds forming into a pattern, then swirling into a pool of colors. She’d cried then, and a few minutes later, she’d made a fist and brought it squarely down on her chest, hoping that her shells would crack. Although she knew there wasn’t much hope, she’d imagined that with time, and a little patience and determination, she could retard the growth and—with a little luck—avoid puberty.
Mary Ellen struck herself again and looked over at the front seat. She had to make sure that she would not be discovered. She knew all too well her grandparents’ response.
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NEW POETRY VIDEO RELEASE: Dialogue with Georgia O’Keeffe I: Chimney Rock.
patricialmeek 