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Genetics
“how accidental is blood, how meaningless/the connection of birth”—Diane Wakoski, “Making a Sacher Torte”

Robert Beveridge

What little of your parents rests in you,
deep, in helices, X and Y twists,
confronts me as we talk
of childhoods, pasts best left
dead, but that need dragged
into the light to be beaten,
dismembered, given
a nighttime burial. You have grown
wild in a forest
of yellow smoke and olive oil
into what you are, took each experience
and molded it, shaped it
to the ever-growing statue
of this Greek goddess in the clearing.

What is it about me
that remains so different?

Our parents, it would seem
met in secret while we slept
miles and states apart
to discuss the husbandry
of children in a proper manner,
the correct devices
for discipline, perhaps
belt, coathanger, iron maiden.

You removed yourself, fled
to a forest, took root.
I remained, this seedling
in a sidewalk crack
outside their house.

Was it the accident
of birth? The tie, blood
to blood, that you severed,
the one I never had?

Despite the tidal pool
of heredity, we may
find that tie of blood
another way. This blade,
used so many times with you,
to peel fruit, slice
the metal seal atop a flask
of wine. Press it
to your palm, I mine, join
hands that our blood
might mingle, forge
the tie luck would allow.

Take my hand, my blood.
Let me live in you, and you
in me, until the last blood
leached from our bodies
sinks into the soil.

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