Longlisted Poem: “Yeletawa”
MARVELLOUS MMESOMACHI IGWE, Swan X, is a poet from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Weganda Review, Cloudscent Journal, Serotonin, Isele, Dawn Review, Poetry Sango-Ota, and Poetry ColumnNND. He is the winner of the 2024 Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize, co-winner of the 2024 Poetry ColumnNND Chapbook Award, the 2024 Folorunsho Editor’s Prize for Poetry, and has been shortlisted for the 2025 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. You can find him listening to his favorite singer, Lana del Rey, or writing a poem. He tweets @mesomaccius.
Yelewata
Scrolling on Twitter you meet the girl.
Young and lithe—
she would be the same age as your sister.
The background is rural,
and where there should be the blossom
of a smile, nothing grew.
All the history in that piercing stare. This
was before you read the caption.
Before the apple, and the swift, sharp bite.
The world was still spinning.
Even as the herdsmen descended. Even as
they reduced the village to a pile
of ashes and bones. And what can I say?
Have we forgotten that
in every version of the myth the country
always remained the monster?
In my naivety I have expected something
good. Have stood before
the sweep of the machete and expected
everything but a wound.
For the ones who engorge themselves
on our blood to actually care.
The irony, the painful irony. Look at
the girl. Look at the moment
her dreams caught fire. Her helplessness
as it crawled through her flesh.
Do not close your eyes. We have to be
branded to be unable
to forget. Remember the silence of the
governor. How even
the state has laid hands in the slaughter.
We are all warm
and wet with our blood. And the world
is still spinning.