Genetics
In Poland, I have a cousin
who lives in an old Soviet bloc,
and on the outside you'd think ruin,
trash everywhere, young bodies
dying of sickness, but there was a nice
wooden table with a sunflower cloth,
wallpaper that peeled in elegance,
white lilacs and pink flamingos,
and her spirit was strong,
and she did nothing with her time,
and all her neighbors loved her
as they looked at me in curious
defense, Japanese boy with bronze
Okinawan skin, the easterly city of Dębno,
somehow related to this Polish woman,
they didn't believe her, thought I was
some boyfriend she was embarrassed
to admit; how we laughed knowing
it would be incest & inbred
while both of us so different,
dangerously alike, my beloved cousin
in Dębno.