Competition

Third Prize

Boot Scraper Mess
by Tim Collins

What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.
Henry Ford.

His mother said religion was important to a clean structured life,
doctored he said, the dribble of glibness already at his chin, before
even the words took challenge with the wall-to-wall carpet reality

of everyday thoughts. Throughout life he had catalogued heavy
cast iron feelings of guilt through the sweaty fingertips of daily
thoughts. He was sick of the infantile doings of people, neighbours,

family, siblings, all that endeavouring to do things cautionary, to be
moral, mental fitness in their simple hideous bodies of tissue, bone
and fluids, without throwing caution to wind's rusted blade or

tarnishing one's soul a little in the sins of wet flesh or even living
life to its tumescent fullest. Often he recalled his father's words: -
"Wipe all those bad thoughts away before entering our home,

wipe them away" as he scraped his boot soles on the wrought
iron boot scraper forged in the shape of a cross, positioned
at the base of the front steps, left boot to the left crossbar, right

boot to the right crossbar .The older he became the more he'd wonder
who would make a boot scraper in the distinct shape of a cross,
perhaps some wantonly donkeyed religious steeped fanatic who'd

too frequently assassinated his faith and glory above the drapery
shop after the 20 second walk from the Hotel Abbs opposite late on
a Friday night, "The two twin deeds of evil in our main street" his

mother had often piously sermonised. And his father late at night
with the little hickory handled spade shovelling the days boot mess
into the farthermost comer of the back garden, a neat pile roughly

pyramided into the junction point of the fence. He remembers him
wandering the backyard, his voice drawn up through the verandah
window on the night's bay breeze, his father saying over and over

"Wherever you go there's evil, wherever you go there's evil." And
that forever indelible sound of him wiping his hands on his oilskin
trousers, so similar to the priest turning the pages of the big red book.

Highly Commended

Leaving Ipswich
by Cate Bailey

Some nights she works at the bar,
Wearing not much more than a slipping cereal box halo
And blue eye shadow that is always venturing to new heights.

She owns
A '93 Commodore
With an exhaust that hangs by a shred
Of decency and hairspray
And a house
With wheels that have arranged around them
Three year growth of some pretty weed,
That some other folk would exfoliate
From their partitioned, army dinner gardens
A bed with hotel borrowed pillowcases,
Drawers full of mismatched cutlery,
And walls adorned with large novelty casino cheques,
That bear the shadow of all things lost and innocence misplaced.

She owns
A drawl
That stretches as far as the chewing gum
She pulls and holds in her glittered plastic nails.
She has
Ear lobes borrowed from her grandmother
That now seem to be submitting to gravity
From a lifetime of misspent youth and dangly earrings.

But the men at the bar don't mind.
And she doesn't mind.
As long as the neon "Female Revue" sign keeps flashing
And the men keep coming
Like moths to a lamp.
And the pretty weeds keep growing
And the hotels don't come asking for their pillow cases back.