Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, selected by Matthew E. Henry
Therese Gleason (she/her) is author of three poetry chapbooks: Hemicrania (Chestnut Review Chapbooks, 2024); Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021), honorable mention, 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club; and Libation (2006), co-winner, South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Competition. Her poetry, flash, and essays appear in 32 Poems, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, On the Seawall, Pithead Chapel, Rattle–Poets Respond, and elsewhere. Therese has taught English composition, ESL, and creative writing at the college level, and Spanish and reading in grades K-8. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she has lived in Madrid, Spain; Washington, DC, and Columbia, South Carolina. She currently lives in Worcester, where she teaches language and literacy to multilingual learners in a public elementary school. She has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. (Online: theresegleason.com).
Poems from Hemicrania
Photophobia
In a dark time, the eye begins to see…
–Theodore Roethke
Vampiric, I shun the sun:
the flesh-eating rays
carved a hole in my nose.
I crave shade, night, the grave
dark—cool marsupial pockets.
Yellow glare ignites
a pupillary bruise, sonar rippling
to my brain, temple, cathedral of pain—
the migraine’s holy see.
Who needs light—or sight?
In Mammoth Cave
fish glide through the Mystic:
finned tongues, pink-white, eye-
less, sensory papillae
their underwater guides.
(An earlier version of this poem was published in Midwest Review Issue 12, Spring 2025).
A Kind of Brainstorm
Sources: Images from the History of Medicine collection, digital archives of the National Library of Medicine: “Ascertaining capacity of cranial cavity by means of water,” memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1885); bone plate from De humani corporis fabrica, Andreas Vesalius (1543); and phrenology cartoon (1838). Found poem text from “What is Migraine” article in The Waterloo (Indiana) Press, November 6, 1913. Woman pictured bottom-right is my great-grandmother, Eva, a migraineur. (1896-1961).
Headache Charm
Walk toward horizon
at low tide
to gather sand dollars
pungent with brine.
Hum a lullaby, waves
lapping your feet.
Collect tears in the cup
of a scallop shell:
open palm ridged
like newly cut teeth.
Take three sips
of saltwater wine,
holy water
from body’s sea.
Place a cake urchin
under your tongue
and crown your skull
with seaweed wreath.
Make an offering
to the pain angel:
mermaid coins
brown and furred,
not yet bleached.
Lie down on the beach,
a cockle shell
over each eye.
Count backwards
from infinity.