Poem of the Week | May 28, 2024

“Fixed” by Bruce Beasley is our Poem of the Week.

Bruce Beasley is the author of nine collections of poems, including most recently Prayershreds (Orison Books, 2023) and All Soul Parts Returned and Theophobia, both from BOA Editions. He has other recent work appearing in Lana Turner, New American Writing, Agni, Gettysburg Review, and Denver Quarterly. His website is www.brucebeasley.net.
 

Fixed

I’m reading my Y-DNA,
bewildering order—

13 22 14 10
13 14 11 14
11 12 11 28 . . .

while I’m mapping the Y fork
on Beesley’s Creek
and scrutinizing
the short tandem repeats
those numbers stand for
on an ‘agnatic line’
(father to son father to son father to son father to—)
AGAT repeating itself 22 times

and I’m writing to a man in Barbados
with a different last name than mine
who Family Tree DNA says has
83.49% chance
of sharing a male ancestor with me
in the last four generations, you see

I get a little fixed on this, listening
to a recording of myself trying to read
word by tortured word a 1665 deed
for a place called Know House,
‘obscure estate’
that Thomas Beesley of Whittingham sold

because I think he’s the son of Robert of Goosnargh and the father of Robert
    of Whittingham
who I think’s
Robert who came to Carolina Colony
Robert who spawned the agnatic line
of Thomas of Onslow Thomas of Onslow Thomas of Onslow
repeat repeat repeat
13 22 14 10
chant it with me
13 22 14 10

We share our polymorphisms, Blessed
George Beesley,
our germline mutations on the Y
I went to your execution place
at Fleet Street and Fetter Way
down the street from St. Paul’s,
I touched the last existing wall of your prison Newgate
saw the Executioner’s Bell they must have rung for you
12 times at midnight
July 1, 1591
When St. Sepulchre’s Bell tomorrow tolls
may the Lord have mercy on your souls

13 22 14 10
13 22 14 10

I would know
my own house
I would know
the same Christ
you knew the same Psalm
42
you carved on your prison wall in the Tower
they continually say unto me Where is thy god
all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me

All the silver eels pour themselves out of the freshwaters
Beesley’s Creek
Their guts unneeded anymore disintegrate
are reabsorbed
on the bewildered way to Sargasso
near-forgotten sea where they were spawned
and will spawn
as the newly wanted gonads
swell
13 22 14 10

They go, knowing & knowing
not where or why it is they go

Author’s Note

My father, who died decades ago when I was a teenager, appeared in a dream a few years ago and intensely urged me to trace my ancestry back “to the eleventh generation.” When I did (I had never gone further than the tenth generation) I discovered Father George Beesley, brother of my ancestor, a Catholic priest martyred in London in 1591 for his faith. “Fixed” is part of a sequence called “Y: Genomic Pilgrimage” exploring his life through meditation on genomics and genealogical obsession and the mutations (and mutations of faith) handed down on the Y chromosome.