Damian Grant
Snakes and Ladders
It is like a game.
For some people it probably is a game.
You are a counter on a board.
The dice is thrown — a six to start, and off you go,
on the unavoidable, odd and even,
black and red numbered squares:
there is no other way to breathe.
The white dots are imperative. Do as they tell you;
up a ladder, down a snake.
Someone is winning, but never mind that —
attend to your imperatives.
For me it is always six and another throw.
Six and again six and again: I am never still.
Up a ladder down a snake,
a ladder, a snake:
the game is urgent.
But the ladders don’t lead anywhere;
they are too short, they leave you where you are,
stupefied and tired with climbing.
Six and again six; there is no way up;
at this stage of the game, the ladders are useless.
The snakes though — look at them,
they are coiling off the board;
they are thick and menacing,
they are a nest.
Six, six; the dice are chasing me towards them,
their white eyes bleach my brain.
Each time the darkness is longer.
I cannot possibly crawl down them always.
Another throw and the snake will deliver me,
deliver me finally from this red mesh
to the black boundary of the board,
from the terrible rattle
to the fiat box lined with felt.
Page(s) 15-16
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The