Monopoly from Issue 80
It’s a real town folded at the waist. He is the little hat
in the streets flat as cardboard he tips to you. A little iron like a ship
from the pale Atlantic sails into the flatland like it didn’t matter. Round they go.
His mother the thimble takes a turn. She collects. Then one shoe rolls seven
while its mate is lost on a roadway and goes to jail. A wheelbarrow passes
full of money. One story for young Republicans and another for the everyday
metal horse and rider from Boardwalk that dive again as we saw them
on newsreels and lands on her street—green Pacific. She has two utilities:
Water & Light. He climbs up wringing wet. He takes his chances.
Look out now—that racecar like a hot dog bun is loose on doubles. It careens.
This is America, a managed economy with money under the game board
where every token can put up its own house and gamble like New Jersey
is doing now to save its state. Every success by an ocean. Your turn.
The character in the Chance cards who looks like that rich old Esquire
financier/grandfather/old fool at the Beauty Contest hasn’t noticed
how much chance is ruining the cities, that luck is covered with dots
like a childhood illness. He’d say penny earned. Golden five-hundreds,
tooth-white ones. This is meant to be quirky. A parallel life
you pay your way out of if your luck doesn’t change.