by Tricia Knoll
Trump threatens to sideline Exxon from Venezuela’s oil: ‘They’re playing too cute’ —CNBC, January 12, 2026
Favored tokens in Monopoly are still Top Hat and Scottie Dog. Today the Battleship gets new attention. A miniature assault rifle and tankers with modifiable flags have appeared in our box thanks to wise-ass teenagers in my house. They used AI to make genius modifications to the board too. Players can build pipelines on Venezuela’s Carabobo, Intercampo, Tia Juana and Lagunillas oil fields. Rolling penalties: go to Cuba, jail or Greenland. Suffer bankruptcy. The young designers ditched the rail lines and Water Works in favor of oil companies though the Electric Company has some cachet. Plaza de la Candelaria and El Centro have replaced the outdated landings of Oriental and States Avenues. The dollar is the paper currency unless you decide to gamble, flicking a spinner to take advantage of or risk fluctuating exchange rates for Bolivars. Names of docks replace the red properties. Park Place and Boardwalk are too iconic to change. The kids kept Vermont because we live there. I dug out Miss Scarlet from Clue as my piece. A woman token. What never changes in Monopoly is the marching. Around and around, never knowing if or when the game ends. Or what the battleship will do next.
Tricia Knoll's family had a Monopoly game set up in the basement of their Illinois house to play during times of tornado warnings. She never liked the game. After 18 years of writing free verse published in dozens of journals and nine collections, she now focuses on prose poems.
