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

Interview

Issue No. 18

Interview with Eileen Myles

Maria Dimitrova

Interview

Issue No. 18

I sat across from Eileen Myles at a large empty table in her London publisher’s office a few hours...

feature

September 2014

The Mediatisation of Contemporary Writing

Nick Thurston

feature

September 2014

Trying to figure out what marks contemporary literature as contemporary is a deceptively complicated job because the concept of...

feature

April 2017

Everywhere and Nowhere

Vahni Capildeo

feature

April 2017

Part of my reluctance to write on citizenship is that as a poet, a worker in delicate, would-be-truthful language,...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required