Newsflash - Submissions open from November 15th until January 1st for Issue 12 of The Poets’ Republic magazine - in print online on stage and off message. See link and our social media forums for updates

From ‘Here to Stay’ by Clare Phillips

On St. Andrew’s Day

 A broken wrist had me on the bus
to work, its planned meanders
taking in the school run.
At farm road ends, each granite cross

 the kids got on in ones and twos
or family groups

 only to divide
into two gendered clans

 each behind a rampart of backpacks
despite the common badge
of a goose in flight
across every red-sweatered chest.

By St. Andrews Day I was dancing again
with doc-martened lasses
and their kilted lads, united
in the matrix of the music.

At midnight, we heard the real geese wintering in from Svalbard
in their thousands
pink foot and barnacle piped us home

each noisy, invisible, scribbling
skein, bending

to the moss like tissue
in a mending bone.