Therese Gleason, Selections from “Matrilineal”

Honorable Mention, Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, selected by Shanta Lee Gander

Eve’s Kitchen

What if Eden’s forbidden fruit 
was a banana
hung like a crescent 
from a crooked hook
in Eve’s kitchen, screwed 
against a wall 
the color of cosmic latte:
pale and bland
as the soft flesh 
inside the sunny husk.

How long would she stand there,
pondering its open-ended parenthesis:
slick yellow phallus 
poised to till black earth
and already sinking into darkness,
the sweetness ripening 
in her nostrils, making her mouth 
water, her armpits moist 
with something like fear 
or desire.

Just think how delicious 
the anticipation
those last few seconds
before she grabbed 
the bright handle and flung open the door—
before she fell, pulling all of us
with her, into a future
where beauty and pleasure
bloom into blackness,
where we are born dying
from our first ragged cry.

The Girl Who Cried Wolf

She wasn’t wicked, just young—
a woman child who didn’t fit
into her burgeoning body.
Some days she danced,
or played her pipe as the sheep slept at her feet.
Other times she sat sullenly, 
cursing the grass for itching her ankles,
the sheep for their oily wool, 
their grating bleats and rank manure.

Maybe she grew tired
of braiding flower wreaths 
to hang on their napes,
longing for her own crown,
to be swept away by a lover, 
to escape
a future already materializing:
rough hands fumbling between skirts
a belly growing heavy year after year.

Or perhaps she confused her own musk
with the wolf’s scent, 
half asleep at dusk
waist deep in a dream,
the yellow slits 
she thought she saw
just the dregs of daylight 
shivering through the trees.
The first time she sounded the alarm
the village came running with torches. 
The second time she shrieked 
in the night, again 
they flew to her rescue,
wary eyes narrowing—
not a track in sight.

The third time, no one 
saw her disappear,
following the wolf into the darkness
while the sheep milled in terror, 
throwing her head back,
licking blood from her paws
under the pearl moon.

Puerta del Perdón
On the Camino de Santiago 

Multitudes from all the nations
travelled the Road of Stars 
some of them crawling 
or barefoot in chains,
the wicked and pious alike
pounding the ground
with bruised heels, stinking 
of sweat and hunger 
and sin.

They bore the lost causes 
on stretchers, swaddled in filthy cloaks, 
scallop shells glowing
against all that black.
They bathed the sick in holy waters,
washing away months of grime.

The door of pardon is massive 
wood and iron, fortified 
by the prayers dying pilgrims
whispered or chanted or kept locked 
in the reliquary of the heart. 
These ancients made forgiveness 
a door you could walk through, salvation 
a shard of bone to venerate: 
a laying on of hands.

Therese Gleason

Therese Gleason is author of two chapbooks: Libation (2006), co-winner of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative chapbook competition, and Matrilineal (2021). She was a finalist in the 2022 Wolfson Press Chapbook Competition, and received an honorable mention for the Frank O’Hara Prize from The Worcester Review. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she works as a literacy teacher in Worcester, MA, where she lives with family. Therese is a poetry editor for The Worcester Review and has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Find her online at theresegleason.com.