This essay is concerned with the ways in which lyric poetry, as a certain kind of literary practice, reconfigures and reimagines dominant constructions of the liberal subject. In so doing, it focuses on the work of Susan N. Kiguli, a Ugandan poet whose 1998 collection, The African Saga, was published in the wake of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government’s attempts to improve the position of women in Ugandan society. Although these (neo)liberal reforms were successful in bringing more women into the orbit of national politics and the economy, they relied on a process of recognition that, when analyzed using the work of Kelly Oliver, appears to do little to change patriarchal structures. This essay argues that four poems in The African Saga – “I am Tired of Talking in Metaphors,” “Where am I?”, “Deconstructing You,” and “The Swing” – constitute an attempt to move beyond the version of the female liberal subject implied in the government’s rhetoric. Through a sustained manipulation of personal pronouns and syntax, the poet articulates a lyric subjectivity that is characterized by movement, constant change, and a redeployment of the desire for recognition that is central to liberalism. This subjectivity, which is highly adaptable yet firmly embodied, therefore cannot be “recognized” within the government’s liberal politics. It is also articulated against deconstructive theories of subjectivity which, according to Kiguli, would construe it as an entity that is entirely relational in its construction. The essay concludes by considering how, in the case of Kiguli, the lyric poem does a certain kind of subjective-political work that is out of the reach of novels written in Uganda during this period.