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.