Monopoly Tokens

by Sarah J. Sloat

race car:  She's touching the wheels when the call comes, young, tonguing the hood in the mannish slang of the last century.  Lipsticked, she's a sport, a shiny body.

wheelbarrow:  Behind the shed, the secret weariness of keeping up.  Prow bereft of engine, legs pegged in dirt.  A self-made man can't stand inert.  Remember the dust you come from; to dust you shall return.

terrier:  Drowsy growl in the martini lunch; sad mascot, surrogate soft.  A child's recompense; do not pass go; go directly, hence.

top hat:  Somewhere there's a private sphere, contained, a shape that acknowledges the peace in emptiness.  Beneath that upmost echelon, most find the look absurd.

battleship:  A curse, the clan's heavy bottomed lumbering, choked with ocean when the hull careens; it's not a game.  We grow too weary; we'll abandon everything to get out:  money, face, hotels and houses; it's not as if someone can win.

thimble:  You thought it a helmet, dainty with immunity; you thought you'd hide in bed but we snuffed out the thumbsuck, the meat stuck under the fingernail. 

cannon:  How trim she looks, nose in the air as if in triumph, sheathed in a one-piece on the diving board.  Arms aloft, she's gunpoint itself, or its hostage, hands up.  He likes the latter.  That posture.  Who'd imagine collapse?

shoe:  Such a drudge, day in, day out.  Still, someone has to run the railroads; someone has to log the wreck.

iron:  Performs an operation while he stands shirtless in dirt thoughts, shaving in a fog that swells with another succulence.  The razor dragging down; the iron proving what change claimed about pain's necessity, its little dividends.

horse & rider:  Imagine this could go on:  collecting profits, paying dues, rolling the dice to land on the carpet, where it's your bluff.  Imagine rearing up and exposing yourself.  As if you cared:  As if no one would snicker at those haunches, made of chalk, while on the boardwalk the rains start.