Spontaneous Beings imagines Mary Wildfire Edmonia Lewis* in a future perfect on the coast of Cornwall. Pondering poisons, tasting the seaweed, the testament of the deep, deep secrets Yemaya** brings to the surface as medicine. 

* Mary Edmonia Wildfire Lewis (July 1844 - September 1907) was an American sculptor of Afro Caribbean and Native American (Mississauga (Ojibwa)) descent. There are many uncertain facts, speculation and myths about Lewis some apparently her own creations.  Moving to Rome in 1865, she became a distinctive figure in Roman society. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black and indigenous peoples of the Americas into Neoclassical-style sculpture. In 1901 she moved to London, settling first at 4a Earls Court Road, then moving to 154 Blythe Road in Brook Green, a terraced four-storey townhouse near Olympia. That is the time when some daydreamers imagine her visiting Cornwall to listen to the ancestors.

** Yemaya - Yemonja, also spelled Yemoja or Yemaja, is a Yoruba deity celebrated as the giver of life and the metaphysical mother of all Orisha (deities) within the Yoruba spiritual pantheon.  Yemonja’s name is derived from the Yoruba words Yeye or Iya (“mother”), omo (“child/children”), and eja (“fish”) and thus literally means “Mother whose children are the fish. (Patricia E. Canson, Encyclopedia of African Religion, 2009). The number 7 belongs to her, representing the seven seas; the colours blue and white, pearls, silver, peacock feather, conch shells, and doves, seaweed and white flowers. She helps in matters of self-love, fertility, emotional wounds, trauma, and healing work. Like the sea she can be calm but also tempestuous. If you disrespect her terrain, or hurt one of her children, her anger will rise. Wielding a broad blade, she’s known to manifest in the form of a tidal wave and "bathe in the blood of her enemies". Eventually, priestesses of Santería slowly syncretized Yemaya with the image of Mother Mary. Radiantly rising from the sea, her dark skin shines under the moon. 

1.

you see - brother Sunrise

he raised me and I grew

like a weed,

despite those idiots

he said ‘…………’ still, I become a flame

the sea has opened

the salt will have ruined your phone

she will have ridden on thick white smoke

nothing else would undo

hours and hours of need

ask the Orisha for sea water

carry the water from one mouth to another

great river mouths so soft

sea water is thicker than blood

go on, ask

for a bridge of water

she will not have taken anything

poisons and beatings, she will have left them there to rot

2.

under the spell of loneliness

I am moved to the edge

of the Atlantic

later a billow of voices

the secret dynamo to all poisons

sings

‘‘…………………….. we dance for you’’

an ancestry of viscera drying on the shingle

an ancestry of obeshas interpreting the dead

Yemaya herself rips the

dulce from its hiding place

of heliocentric trinity

she gesticulates something I don’t understand

I will have found hundreds of photos of you online

will there have been bigotry on the beach?

let them speak, let them call it Latin

nodosum spiralis

digitata ulva intestinalis

porphyra umbilicalis

o long lived knotted wrack not

poison not revery but testament

the sea is full of forest

‘in the first movement we will have felt the calm,

flowing ocean, stroking the shores’

3.

my hand floats in the water

the saliva in your mouth comes to meet it

I need to drink

the sea carried in eyes of leather

habituated to loss

fixated on littoral desires

I don’t understand

she will have buried a sister in a shallow tropical sea

‘a wide sargasso sea’

she will have pulled you in and pushed you out

100ds of times

her rage a pearl you want so much you hide it

you swallow it

is that her likeness? is it a spirit ?

petition her remind her, I live on land, I ………….

some words hit like chisels and thus nocturnal selves splinter off

a me refusing to be my reflection

an I sinks to the bottom

an I rises to the top

a me floats away and reproduces

effortlessly

in poems the sun will have set in the horizon,

IRL it sets in the middle of your chest

4.

‘listen to things’ wildfire and spontaneous beings made out of nothing

my hungry heart opens my mouth and I chew

a little

it feels like – like biting my own cheek

chewing my own self

the seaweed brings news of those never consulted

to those who don’t care,

for seeing, they feel

wait …nobody knows how it feels

white lies? she will have said what she had to say

by noon she will have swapped a marble blanket for a seaweed mantle

blithe dark gentle

5.

We will be bones together Cleopatra

6.

in big gulps

invisible meadows harvest the sun

beings Made Out of Nothing shivering

wringing like bells, broken and trusting the moon

the path is change

I open my eyes and see her

crouching on the cliff face

charged terrifying her mouth

open

unmoving

desirable and devouring

7.

a void goddess of deep thermal language

leaks out

pierced by the pensive unknowability of the

lovers or an entity of microbial underwater

forests