The Game
by Hannah Linden
Let’s pretend it’s the beginning of the adventure and we have still to find the clues. I am still feeling playful and you are full of yourself in a way that I find charming. The party is full of slightly drunk people singing songs we sang when we were kids and everyone is laughing. We stumble over the first clue and someone reads it in a silly voice.
When someone else bangs a drum we all line up in a conga, crash through a pond, get our feet soaked. The drink is flowing and everyone giggles when a follower slips in the mud. No one worries if they’re hurt. We’re laughing into the night. If neighbours complain, hoot and holler, we send streamers over the fence.
It’s a big adventure and they’re missing it. Poor duds. Killjoys. We conga over their lawn. Next clue on the other side someone shouts. Throws a stone through their window. They hide thinking we’ll sober up by morning.
Our feet are sore but we’ve come so far we want to solve it now. Where’s the next clue, where is it? We’ve stopped the morning traffic as we crossed the motorway. Someone was clipped by a side mirror but that’s all part of the fun. No pain no gain, eh?
Clue, clue, clue, clue we chant, into our leader’s shadow.
Hannah Linden is neurodivergent, queer, from a working-class Northern background but lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon, UK. Her most recent awards include 1st prize Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021, and 2nd Prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. She is published widely eg in Acumen, Atrium, Blackbox Manifold, Iambapoet, Lighthouse, Magma, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Setumag, Shearsman, Stanchion, Stand, Tears in the Fence, The Rialto, Under the Radar etc. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky, (V. Press) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social