The Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.
South Side Weekly and Build Coffee & Books will host our Third Thursdays open mic, featuring a writing workshop facilitated by theMIND, on March 19 at 6:30pm!
ATLAS COMPLEX by theMIND
I been broke
I stay breaking shit
Like your concentration
Condensation rolls down my mason
This the last clean glass in this empty house
Every month I wonder how the hell we make it
I told you everything, gave you everything
You always wanted me naked
Now I’m selling everything, I’m telling everything
I hope honesty saves us
Look what these melodies gave us
Plane tickets to places I can’t pronounce
Women friends and kinfolk who never loved me
Called me ugly
I had my doubts
My house ain’t have mirrors and neither did yours
How’d you see yourself?
How you see yourself?
I guess it took something breaking just to be something more
Who goin pick these pieces off of this floor?
Not you
Don’t move the old couch in your new house
Burn that shit
If these wall could talk I would move out
I don’t need that lip
I been trying build a new one
Too caught up in confusion
Of moving out and moving on and needing you for both
I think we broke too close
I know my soul is still intact
I still question if shoes fit
Prayed for this shit, granny said hopes for the foolish
Never seen myself making it past 22
Know it can’t buy happiness, but look what this money do
In foster homes ain’t never seen this many smiles where I’m from
Scared of failing my family, I know that we still young
Tell me how many make it close to this point
Knowing I played the fool
What if I stayed in school?
I shed tears here with this ballpoint
Enough to fill a drake-sized swimming pool
I need to feel love for some insurance
You could slice the pressure in the air with a Ginsu
Spilled my whole soul in this venue
Trying to get this shit off my mental
I still have nightmares in that house that me and my sisters done lived thru
I can’t even wipe this kinda shit from psyche
Reliving all this shit and rinse my eyes with some Visine
Don’t move the old couch in your new house
Burn that shit
If these wall could talk I would move out
I don’t need that lip
I been trying build a new one
Too caught up in confusion
Of moving out and moving on and need you for both
I think we broke
Prompt:
“Write from the perspective of an object that holds memories you may or may not want to keep.”
This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces.
Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com