LIBERTY MY ONLY PIRATE WATER: A SESTINA
after Suzanne Césaire, Surrealism & Us
On God’s green earth, I strive to be not the wound
but the soft opening of a lily unfolding at dawn.
The moon arrives & my dreams are haunted
by the beating of dark wings. My hands, painted
with orange pollen, sprout feathers & you come
to me as an apparition of light. I yell a prayer.
How does truth filter into song? This prayer
begins with an offering of flesh. Here is wound
& three miniature horses on my chest; I come
determined, bright & rosy, to show I desire dawn
& not decay. Bury me in honey. I want painted
golden lips to hold this voice & not be haunted
by the mouths of whales. I do not go, haunted
into the mouth of a whale. Suzanne, the prayer
is liberty, pirate water & sampan boat painted
love I want to sing, burst melodic the azure wound.
You river that runs, hear my cry. I want the dawn.
My soul has grown deep & ancient & spirits come
triumphant to tell me remember. Small river, come
rise in my throat. I write for you, haunted
I return for you, haunted. I am you. It’s dawn.
& I wake the sleeping beauty. She tells me prayer
pacifies the urgency, that I should not be a wound
waiting like the woman in Lorde’s poem painted
waiting at the station for the knight, black, painted
salvation. Small river running water come
rise in my throat & rouse the horses. I will wound
the want to reveal that the love lives, not haunted,
inside me, is me & beyond the veil this prayer
will not forsake me. Suzanne, listen. I must BE dawn
& not the waiting for the sun. Suzanne, I sing dawn
& I am embraced by light as the first dream is painted
true, not blue. Dark wings are beauty & prayer
is not evidence of will. Suzanne, I must roar & come
closer to a vision of freedom & a voice not haunted.
This song is a bone memory & I can heal the wound
& be the dawn. Small river run & heal this wound.
Tell Lorde that I have painted the stars, not haunted
by despair. Pray Suzanne that I be pirate water I come.
Phoenix Yemi is a Nigerian-British poet and artist based in London. Her work is rooted in the beauty and the violence of the natural world as a means of interrogating broader themes of power and inequality in society. She is the founder of Black Geographies, a night of music and poetry dedicated to the power of language as a tool of resistance. Phoenix also writes 'A Worm Moon', a monthly poetry newsletter for Worms Magazine, and has had her work published in New Currency, Sweet Thang Zine, Mania, and Reference Press. She has performed in Tate Britain, Tate Modern and The Serpentine Pavillion. She is currently the poet in residence at Reference Point and is working on her first full-length collection.
