A Worm Moon In September

Welcome to A Worm Moon, a poetry newsletter where I, Phoenix Yemi, share what I've been reading and writing through the month.

For September, I've been reflecting on the cycle of seasons, and my discomfort with change.

We've been moving from summer to autumn, and while the beginning of decay reminds me that time is relentless, the colours on the ground are starting to resemble a bonfire. And I'm reminded that there are other sources of light besides the sun.

Before we begin with the chosen poems for this month, here's a poem of my own. It's titled 'The Days Are Still Warm and I Am a Fish Swimming Through Watery Layers of Sleep' and part of the title comes from a poem called 'Elegy' by Linda Pastan. I keep going back to it and I wanted to find a way to reference it somehow. This month, it's like I've been wading through marshland.

I lean on Audre Lorde (1934-1992) when I'm feeling powerless. Her writing on the erotic is freeing. This is the first poem in her collection Coal, and though it was published in 1976, it was written in 1968 in dedication to Martin Luther King Jr.

There's something about September and how it elicits our collective memory of going back to school. And the poem, with its imagery of schoolchildren, takes me back to hope. Here's a link to a studio recording of the poem by Lorde.

I found this poem in an anthology of surrealist women. It's by Hilary Booth (unknown) and I scoured the internet for more of her poems but this book by Penelope Rosemont was sadly the only concrete thing I managed to find.

It stayed with me because there's something about the imagery in this poem that feels akin to a beating heart; I want to rise. It's from Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, published in 1998.

I stumbled upon Alice Paleen Rahon (1904-1987) in the same anthology of surrealist women I found Hilary Booth in. She began as a poet in Europe and after she arrived to Mexico, she began painting. This poem is from her collection Shapeshifters translated from French to English for the first time by Mary Ann Caws, published in 2021.

I kept coming back to the first line when I was thinking about September and how the flora begins to go dormant.

This month's cento is a poem in three parts, stitched together with lines from the poets featured in the newsletter and my own words. It's called 'Things Are Beginning to Fall'.

Thank you to Alice Paleen Rahon, Audre Lorde and Hilary Booth for their voices.