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Winning\/Losing<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, plastic dots<\/p>\n determined whether you would climb or slide,<\/p>\n and draughts where rules came out of nowhere<\/p>\n the wooden discs stacked up, your win denied.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Monopoly meant scrabbling to buy<\/p>\n and speculate, carve out a space<\/p>\n for cash and rank to grow like greedy plants,<\/p>\n to stand revealed as master of your race.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Moves were studied, learned from books, until<\/p>\n No-one would take you on at war game chess.<\/p>\n And so you loved to cards, to Solo Whist.<\/p>\n Hearts was not your lucky suit, confess.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Till finally you set down like a dare<\/p>\n one perfect unequivocal mis\u00e8re ouvert.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Angela Topping<\/strong> has published seven full collections and three chapbooks, all with reputable publishers. In 2013.She held a writer\u2019s residency at Gladstone’s Library and won first prize in the Buzzwords competion judged by David Morley Her poems have appeared in over 50 anthologies and many magazines such as Poetry Review<\/em> and London Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Winning\/Losing In Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, plastic dots determined whether you would climb or slide, and draughts where rules came out of nowhere the wooden discs stacked up, your win denied. Monopoly meant scrabbling to buy and speculate, carve out a space for cash and rank to grow like greedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6902,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900\/revisions\/6902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}