Competition entries

Heather Wallace

Look Smart

Father loved looking smart. He constantly told me "you must always be well turned out my boy." During National Service, it was drilled into him to keep his kit in A1 order. A butcher by trade, he enjoyed doing part-time modeling photo shoots for the seasonal men's ware advertisements. As payment, he was allowed to keep one of the outfits he modeled. We rarely knew what he kept. When he was arrested for multiple murders over many years, we learned he had hacked people to death when he was 'well turned out' and then burned the blood stained clothes.

[Inspired by the cover of "Etched in Wood", Glynn Parry]

Shaz Jones

A Soul Rewinding

Warm sand at Cottesloe made it bittersweet to remember Paul lovingly clanking his wrench on freezing copper pipes teasing out a few more drops for my morning wash in Bristol.
I hadn’t seen him since I flew out of Heathrow twenty-five years ago.
He kept leaving messages on the answering machine. And wrote a few times.
Unrequited.
The love songs mix tape he sent was also one-sided, forcing me to rewind it all again.
Until the cassette player died (dusty decades ago).
So when the tape unraveled now why did my soul too?
Spotify wouldn’t do that to me.

{Inspired by the cover of "You Belong Here", Laurie Steed, Margaret River Press]

David Allan-Petale

The Only Warm Place

He wanders into the book shop with no purpose in mind but to browse. Just him and the girl behind the counter eating an apple, nose stuck in a book. Something crime to judge by the cover font.
Rain quickens outside. There’s the feeling of being draped with a wool blanket, warm and dry in a wet place. On a shelf he spies a tome on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, CLOSING SALE: $19.99.
‘Bargain,’ he says, paying the girl, the book under his arm. He walks into the city with cold air on his face, the light and heat receding.

[Inspired by the cover of "The Last Bookshop", Emma Young, Fremantle Press]

Jeimer Ng

Mona

The art gallery exhibition is next week and I have nothing but my love for her to display for all to see. I handcraft a frame capable of holding her chaos and beauty all at once. My agent says it does not fit the theme of the collapse and rebirth of empires, but I can't think of anything more fitting.

[Inspired by the cover of "The Gallerist", Michael Levitt]

Lee Reader

The End

Instinctively, he looks into the man’s eyes. Squinting, sunglasses reflect the shadow of licking sunlight. The band of his middle tight and bladder pressure intense. His ear needs scratching but where is his hand? Mum could help, she would know what to do wouldn’t she?

The glare is getting brighter and rolling towards him in waves. Focusing on the man, trying to speak to him, but nothing, as if abandoned by his humanity, his senses, his mind.

Crack! Boom! A cascade of warmth down his legs and all around him is fracturing. A howling shriek the final piercing sound.

[Inspired by the cover of "Skyglow", Lesley Thiele, Margaret River Press]

Rosie Sitorus

My mother’s tongue

My mother speaks a tongue that doesn’t know my soft palate or my alveolar ridge.. She’s in my dreams, the only place her heart beats now, talking to me like she’s sat here in my room, orange streetlight and flickering trees painting her cheeks. My monolingual ears crest the neverending fricatives and leave me only with more questions.

Why didn’t you teach me? Ik deed.
Why won’t you speak English? Kun je geen Nederlands leren?
Didn’t you love me enough? Meer dan wat dan ook.

Nocturnal heat wakes me, sodden, as my consciousness chases the echoes of my mother’s tongue.

[Inspired by the cover of "Nganajungu Yagu", Charmaine Papertalk Green, Cordite Books]

Ali Hitchcock

My Little Boat

The rocking always spirited me into a dreamy sleep. It's one of the reasons I loved my little boat. The rocking and the cosiness. This room is cosy but not snug as a cuddle like my little boat.

I could hoist the anchor and sail along for a better view of the sunrise or head to the rivermouth to watch the sun dip into the sea. This room faces a courtyard. My days are no longer marked by the sun's movements.

I thought I'd stay on my little boat forever. My days will end in this dreary nursing home instead.

[Inspired by the cover of "The Little Boat on Trusting Lane", Mel Hall, Fremantle Press]

Bonnie Christian

Is that you?

She’s been marking tracks around the lake, searching.
The dragonflies dart by, madly. Hello? She whispers.

A turtle trudges across the grass to the water.
Is that you? She calls.

The wild poppies, tall as she is, sway across her path.
Come back, she cries.

People tell her she will visit, make herself known.
Where is she?

Maybe she will come during a storm.
Like the one that poured on the day she arrived.

Maybe she will visit when the sun peeks through the clouds, glistening a ray of hope.
Like on the day when she had to say goodbye.

[Inspired by the cover of "Lion, is that You?", Moira Court, Fremantle Press]

Bec Curtin

Unchanged

Shouldn’t his reflection change?

A crumpled car. Whisky emanating from his sharp breaths. The mother holding a cold, still child.

A fallen figure and a broken soul. Yet, the set of his jaw and the creases of his aging hands in the water’s ripples remained. Clear, sharp, unending.

Each year he waited for the knock on his door. The thud to match the rhythm of his heartbeat as he’d run. Each year he wanted the knock on his door because he hadn’t looked back.

He’d lived a life; but he’d lived a lie. Yet his face remained unchanged.

[Inspired by the cover of "Randolph Stow: Critical Essays", Kate Leah Rendell (ed.) UWA Publishing]

Lorraine Horsley

The Release

The blue balloon, too cheerful by far, freed from her hand, lifts and shimmies on an eddy of breeze.

She never chooses red.

She watches it up, up into the obscene bright blue. Her eyes burning, only partly from the sunlight.

Her hand drifts to her stomach. Grips it tight like a purse.

Squeals from the park dance through her head. Notes from a yearned-for melody.

The balloon has gone now.

Swallowed by the deep blue.

She prays, not for the first time, that next month her feet will not find this well-worn path.

[Inspired by the cover of "Twice Not Shy", Laura Keenan and Linda Martin (eds), Night Parrot Press]