A Worm Moon In October 2025
Welcome to A Worm Moon, a poetry newsletter where I, Phoenix Yemi, share what I've been reading and writing through the month.
It's Autumn. The boundary between day and night has dissolved into obscurity. I'm wary of the dark, and I want to lay myself down at the feet of someone who might do something tender, violent, alive. Are you also dreaming of August?
I don't know when, but I remember that the trees were the first thing to change. Now we're surrounded by sunset-coloured leaves falling all around us into the brown mulch and decay. The persistence of nature; that's gospel. And I'm thinking about the threshold between what was and what is, how we move through it, who we become on the other side. I'm learning that faith lives in that in-between, not as certainty, but as a willingness to keep returning.
Sometimes I think of Greta Stoddart’s poem, how walking into church is like walking into someone’s mind. October feels like that, a season of interior rooms, where you can almost hear the hum of all that’s been prayed for. And then I think of that line: I want to lay myself down at the feet of someone who might do something, and how faith is not the waiting but the doing, the small, trembling acts that keep us alive.
That's the echo of aja monet, her words reverberating through every room of my brain. I'm grateful. Even more so because I had the honour of speaking with her for the upcoming issue of Worms.
So here we are, standing in the half-light, wistful, grateful, and uncertain. Uncertain, but faithful.
1
Moving through grief feels like an endless tide. I suppose it is, but the moments underwater are lessening. This piece, somewhere between poetry and prose wrestles with that: the absurd persistence of time, of life and death, and how I still find grace inside the madness. It's about what outlives us, how sometimes language fails, and the small, impossible humour of worms in top hats. I miss my dad.
2
"To live in this world // you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, /to let it go."
From 'In Blackwater Woods' by Mary Oliver.
3
There's the ache, and then there's the longing. Sea urchins are beautiful, their soft bodies armoured in spines. Sometimes hunger can be devotional.
4
Brittle with memory, I tell love to leave the cicadas. Here, the body becomes a site of withdrawal and return, echoing with the question: what remains to be celebrated once we’ve turned from the world that made us? This poem is Nymphs by Oluwaseun Olayiwola. It's in his debut poetry collection Strange Beach.
5
A poem for November. Thank you Rita Dove. It captures the uneasy beauty of waiting, the quiet artistry of melancholy. We must not yield to despair.
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 💌
