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

Prize Entry

April 2017

/gosha rubchinskiy/

Christopher Burkham

Prize Entry

April 2017

1. APARTMENT INTERIOR/MORNING/BELYAYEVO, MOCKBA, ROSSIJSKAJA FEDERACIJA…   There is a T-shirt on the desk in front of him.  ...

poetry

February 2017

In Case of Death

David Nash

poetry

February 2017

1. Cessation of Breath: Is He Breathing?   He’s not breathing, and he cannot go on like this. He...

feature

Issue No. 10

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

David Harvey

feature

Issue No. 10

Prospects for a Happy but Contested Future: The Promise of Revolutionary Humanism   From time immemorial there have been...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required