A Worm Moon In November 2025
Welcome to A Worm Moon, a poetry newsletter where I, Phoenix Yemi, share what I've been reading and writing through the month.
November. A dark sky that bloomed bruises, tears. I was angry. Unmoored. I was a bird in flight, carrying poems that felt like bright, fragile animals. I’m grateful for the words, and trying only to make it to the end of the year intact. I still desire. And I pray that the new year opens like a portal and tenderness is favoured. A softer kind of life.
There’s so much tenacity in keeping the self together as all worlds are falling apart. There is an architecture to suffering, to the transformation it offers. And I know my anger is appropriate, it always has been, but the body does not know yet, is still searching, for the difference between devotion and submission, and if there is indeed beauty inside all this hunger.
I still desire.
And I insist upon the door, on the actualisation of the myth, that my father is an angel, my angel, and that my dreams are rooted to bone, to soil. I run wild beside wild horses, and I feel the pull downward, toward what is buried, toward what is becoming.
There's a brief passage I want to share with you. It's by the Iranian poet and film director Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967) from her book Sin, translated by Sholeh Wolpé.
1
If the binary is forced upon us, Madonna or Whore, then which choice serves me and which choice serves you? The poem below is also by Forugh Farrokhzad. The last stanza lights a fire beneath me. I too have found myself tired of being a prude, and I think, given this year, I'd happily exchange the golden crown of divinity for the dark, aching embrace of a sin. What feels more alive than pleasure? The no-man's land between that borders pain.
2
This is an excerpt from a longer poem about desire, about a wanting that feels monstrous, unwieldy, and the ache of knowing how far my needs stretch beyond what you can offer. These thoughts open small wounds and poke holes in the world we're building together, and if I could, I'd step outside of myself and divorce our dreams from a history that bears down on every choice we make. There is no freedom in love. Forgive me. But know that in every lifetime, I'd choose him.
3
The terror and the beauty of the garden. Adam and Eve, Eden, and the old suggestion of woman as shaped from the rib of a man. No! I refuse it, and put forward this poem by Grace Bauer instead.
4
This poem is an attempt to understand the flow of the river – you cannot predict the movement of a current or how it keeps shifting even when you beg it to still. In the wake of loss, a new self forms, and time refuses to settle. I miss my dad. I see him so clearly in my face, and it is both beautiful and burdensome. I feel so unsure about who I am now, what I what, and what I'm allowed to have in this world. I don't trust the rainbow.
5
A talisman of sorts. The book itself feels like a magical object, something unearthed from ancient soil: the gold foil, the cover already degraded, and the white stag with a golden crown around its neck resting on the grass. I like carrying it around. Thank you Lucie Brock-Broido. Thank you for the animals, the colours, the women. Thank you for Stay, Illusion.
6
I wrote this poem after an evening at the Kerry James Marshall exhibition at the RCA. This was followed by Nala Sinephro live at the Royal Festival Hall, and I'm so grateful to have walked through those doors. It was like something opened up in me, and broke in me at the same time. And this poem is an exploration of that, of feeling held and undone all at once. And I think with this piece, it's torrential rain under a sky dotted with stars, with a thousand suns, and what I'm asking is how to keep going with this knowledge of everything we inherit, everything we long for, and everything that aches.
What poems are you reading? Please share them with me, I’m compiling a document. You can email me by clicking on the button below (at phoenixyemi@gmail.com) or you can find me on Instagram @phoenixyemoja
💌 With Love, Phoenix 💌
