May 25, 2024

by VUMA PHIRI

Siren Song

I uproot a conch shell

from the seabed

press my open mouth

to its earnest ear –

I am a siren song,

I whisper. A symphony

of beauty

and madness.

Stretching my palms

to peck the epipelagic,

I swim towards the mirror

glimmering on the surface.

My ebony fingers

tracing the torrents

to imprint my skin

upon the waves –

wearing the water

kissing my wrists

like cool cowrie

shell charms.

I embrace the chill

penetrating my bones,

the sea-salt sting

that prickles my eyes,

lick salt-stained tears

travelling to my lips,

and sip sacred seas

unleashed upon my tongue.

I drench myself in the waters.

Black body dipped below the

melted diamond jewels poured

across the Great Atlantic.

The oceanic abyss is no

place for a little mermaid.

Dark is the flesh that blends

beneath the bottomless briny.

Deep are the roots emerging

from my scalp like bubbles

blown, and un-bursting, a crown

swelling when submerged.

I gulp the ocean. Drink each

language lost at sea, swallow the

songs sang to subdue sailors, I

serenade them from the seashore.

I whine my waist with the waves,

serpent-tail shimmering

and shimmying – a winking light

beneath a waning moonlit night

This poem is dedicated to the mythology of Africa, the Caribbean and Black America (North and South) and the

lingering history of Black mermaids. May the water spirits and sirens that swam from the continent to the

diaspora continue to survive among and within us.