The Redcoats are coming

My mother and I like to sit and play the I-ching,

She content with her life, we ask about the two men in mine.

One of them is second choice, a close ish second.

Definitely more sensible.

The first-choice lives in empty spaces

when you arrive, he’s just left.

He’s not a ‘I’m heading over now, would you like

anything from the shops’ kind of person,

more detained, held-up 

—but still coming.

Will the hexagram be lucky?

Or is he like a dream when you’ve spent your last dollars

on a bet, your lantern’s blown out

and the Redcoats are coming.

Satya Bosman is the founder and co-editor of the Black Cat Poetry Press. She lives in Kent, England, with her dog Rollo. Her poetry was commended in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society Folio competition in 2023.

She has been featured in several publications, most recently 14 Magazine, Fawn Press, and upcoming in Dreich. Satya begins her Master’s in Creative Writing through The Open University in 2024 where she hopes to develop her first pamphlet.