Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe, Swan X, is a poet from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Agbowó, Chestnut Review, Electric Literature, Palette Poetry, Poet Lore, Sontag Magazine, Collaborature, Weganda Review, Cloudscent Journal, Serotonin, Isele, Dawn Review, amongst others. He is the winner of the 2024 Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize, co-winner of the 2024 Poetry Column NND Chapbook Award, a finalist for the 2025 Rhonda Gail Williford Award for Poetry and was 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.
Ceuta
Darling, you must know I am softer than my horns. I promise, my intentions are pure. Believe
me. Like Aeneas, I would not have come seeking if our land was good, if our land was not
burning. Years, we waited for the inferno to stop. But did it stop? Have our salvation not always
been separated from us by a distance— a wound, a meridian, an open sea? Even now I am at the
shore of my bettering, willing to risk death to survive death. To survive the heat and the bullet,
the saltwater, the blood. Open your arms if I make it to your bosom. I deserve that, at least.
Something warm and welcoming. Something good. Something that is not the angel on the
watchtower sending me back to the water by the gun. I am just as human. Just as mauled by this
desire to live. So what would you do if I reach the white sands, my starved body naked and slick,
my blue heart torn to pieces by the cruel hands of water? You would let me live, Darling. You
would let me live.
First line attributed
to Samuel Adeyemi