Competition

Second Prize

Bottled Lie
by Clara Fannjiang
Davis, CA, USA

i am trapped in a pretty bottle
Izze sparkling pomegranate juice
with other natural flavors
the letters dance backwards in my eyes –
while you can read them, while you can smile at the
condescending
perfect-circle
sweetboy-magenta
butchered-pomegranate
you maddeningly pretentious fool, i mutter, you knew i'd end up here someday pining away in the fizzles
your irises are like a narcotic –
the day i tried to sew shut your lids
clamors in my mind
smiles are too sweet for me
how long have i told you, this bottle trap is perfectly fine for me?
the glass is warped, wreaking havoc on my vision –
but i'll take it, thank you.
you find this so laughable, you need not bother say i have no sky,
sophomoric fool, ridiculous fool, don't you know that i need no sky?
the spizzh~–tuzzle-pazzle of pomegranate is a wine of lies
intoxicating, like breathing smirks.
my fingers can almost etch out your lips
from memory, before i found my refuge in this glass.
you tell me its absurdly brittle, this sham, and you laugh and say you'll wait
and i pout in that way you - loved - and scath, no, look at how
beautiful and sturdy and unbreakably cold ice fizz blind eyes nothing –
my breath is gone before i can save it

and you fling my cringing bottle against the white walls the fizz leaving my ears and i can read izze's bland asinine smile for myself and the neatly filed thoughts spill hopelessly from my pompous overstuffed brain and these words you say them again and again and i know who where what I am and I am yours.

Third Prize

The Knot
by Violet Macdonald
Battery Point, Tas

I showed him how to tie it.

I was a scout,
He was five years younger than me.

I showed him how you loop it,
Pull it,
Twist it.

You won't get that one breaking,
I said.
He tied up his tyre swing with it.

And then last year I found him;
And as the sirens of the ambulance wailed
I felt like I'd killed him.

`Cos the last thing he ever did was tie the knot.