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

feature

October 2012

Crown of Thorns Starfish

Caspar Henderson

feature

October 2012

If you look into infinity what do you see? Your backside!  –Tristan Tzara   The drug-addict, drunk, wife-shooter and...

Interview

March 2017

Interview with Bae Suah

Deborah Smith

Bae Suah

Interview

March 2017

The Essayist’s Desk, published in 2003 and written when its author Bae Suah had just returned from an 11-month...

poetry

January 2012

Picasso (1964)

Campbell McGrath

poetry

January 2012

A canvas comprises a totality of surface just as Spain is composed of constituent parts, Catalunya, Madrid, hills and...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required