Competition

Highly Commended

Eighteen
by Jessica Duncan
Brigidine College, Indooroopilly, Qld

The souls of those eighteen
Wander through the rubber.
In a foreign place,
Though they have been there so long.
Their hearts are young,
Their minds paused in time.
Their bodies back home.
They are not lonely, there
In the undergrowth.
They share it with each other,
All men of common mind
Robbed of their youth.
Their living comrades face
The pain, day after day.
But these eighteen are trapped in time.
Their riffles still in their hands,
Their grenades tied to their belts,
They watch for the enemy I
But they do not come.
They are the living
Of an epic battle.
They are the victims of a time
Long forgotten.

Highly Commended

Motion Sickness
by River Romeo
Mallacoota, Vic

Define the blessed, sacred shame,
a hope, to fall, a lapse, the tomb,
tear out the eyes to memory maim,
the dead and suffocating womb.

The dust in the walls, a rusty glow,
masked by the withered harvest of years,
in bloody, golden streams to flow,
the haunting doubt and veiled fears.

Conceive a dream for me to mount,
turn the page and cut me out.

Sweet sickness buried in the flesh,
chaotic, broken and nascent,
yielding, empty, fickle, fresh,
like smoke and sweet dew morning scent.

In cool repose a form to hold,
to watch the soul regain the mould.

Each passage ignites to searing flame,
like sirens screaming in the night,
a dream of eternal, hallowed light,
the wish each moment could stay the same.

Frail, rotting, hollow, torn,
inside a catacomb of sound,
an empty conquest, building mounds,
am I for transience to mourn?