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

Art

Issue No. 7

Pyramid Schemes: Reading the Shard

Lawrence Lek

Art

Issue No. 7

These sketches were created to illustrate an essay by Lawrence Lek in The White Review No. 7, ‘Pyramid Schemes:...

feature

October 2011

The White Review No.3 Editorial

The Editors

feature

October 2011

In the course of putting three issues of The White Review together, the editors have been presented with the...

fiction

May 2016

Panty

Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

TR. Arunava Sinha

fiction

May 2016

She was walking. Along an almost silent lane in the city.   Work – she had abandoned her work...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required