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

June 2011

Malcolm Starke Died Today

Kit Buchan

poetry

June 2011

Malcolm Starke died today who rang us most nights so late that it could only be him. He’d been...

feature

Issue No. 1

(Un)timely considerations on old and current issues

Donatien Grau

feature

Issue No. 1

Criticism has not been doing well lately. The London Review of Books, Europe’s biggest-selling literary publication, would no longer...

Art

July 2012

Interview with Ben Rivers

Alice Hattrick

Art

July 2012

Ben Rivers is an artist who makes films. Two Years at Sea, his first feature-length film, was released to...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required