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

October 2013

Transylvania

Jon Stone

poetry

October 2013

The rabbit darkness just beyond the headlights’ sprawl and parcel darkness stopping up the drivers’ mouths like oaths or...

feature

September 2013

A God In Spite of His Nose

Anna Della Subin

feature

September 2013

‘Paradise is a person. Come into this world.’ — Charles Olson   In the darkness of the temple, footsteps...

fiction

June 2017

Turksib

Lutz Seiler

TR. Alexander Booth

fiction

June 2017

The jolts of the tracks were stronger now and came at irregular intervals. With my arms outstretched, I held...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required