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

May 2015

Europe

Kirill Medvedev

TR. Keith Gessen

poetry

May 2015

I’m riding the bus with a group of athletes from some provincial town they’re going to a competition in...

Interview

January 2015

Interview with Magdalena Tulli

TR. Bill Johnston

Grzegorz Jankowicz

Interview

January 2015

This interview appeared in Po co jest sztuka? (What Is Art For?), a 2013 collection of interviews with Polish...

Art

November 2016

The Green Ray

Agnieszka Gratza

Art

November 2016

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Walt Whitman, Leaves...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required