share


Monopoly (after Ashbery)

I keep everything until the moment it’s needed.
I am the glint in your bank manager’s eye.
I never eat cake in case of global meltdown.
I am my own consolation.

I have a troubled relationship with material things:
I drop my coppers smugly in the river.
(I do everything with an unbearable smugness.)
I propose a vote of thanks.

I make small errors in your favour. Sometimes
I pretend nothing is wrong.
I won second prize in a beauty contest.
I am yellowing at the edges.

I was last seen drawing the short straw.
I hang about tragically on street corners, where
I hand out cards that read: if you see
I am struggling to lift this card, please, do not help me.

 

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is a Hong Kong-born poet and academic. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize. She teaches poetry at King’s College London.


READ NEXT

poetry

Issue No. 2

The Brothel

Kit Buchan

poetry

Issue No. 2

I unearthed a little brothel in the spring of forty-three, It was captained by a midwife who was ninety...

Interview

August 2013

Interview with Marvin Gaye Chetwynd

Ben Eastham

Interview

August 2013

Four or so years ago, at what was then the single Peckham establishment to serve a selection of sandwiches...

Interview

January 2013

Interview with Kalle Lasn

Huw Lemmey

Interview

January 2013

Reinventing a political culture is a difficult task to set oneself; political aesthetics develop alongside political movements, and tracing...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required