TERESE SVOBODA

Pineal

Such a gland holds sadness,
manufactures it in, say, white gobs

that creeps from where
the third eye has sunk to,

unable to bear evolution
in evolution's sadness. Arrowing back

on a plane to where I lived before
the diaspora of highway, ambition

gassing my escape, I sense
the gland is old-teenaged,

menopausal, sick with theatrical sob.
All these extra people

rowed beside me had parents and
forgot them, except for a few

portraits. How to worship
that state I am soaring toward,

the state of the body, its father,
mother unrequited in a sadness

that just stops at Off?