Competition

Highly Commended

A Memory from Summer
by Celina Macdonald
Charlbury, Oxon, UK

I remember going to the funfair every summer when we were little.
We used to argue over who’d drive the bumper car,
The rides were scarier back then.
And the candy floss always came on sticks,
It tasted so much better.
We'd walk home with balloons that tried to fly away
We'd cry if they escaped but we'd
Never,
Ever,
Let mum and dad tie the strings to our wrists.
At night we'd lie in bed boiling hot,
Watching the balloons bob against the ceiling.

When we woke up in the morning
We'd see the balloons hovering meagrely above the floor,
And we'd try to make them fly again like yesterday.

Highly Commended

Universe - Earth
by Kirsty McCormack
Redbank Plains, Qld

UniverseEarth

you, suicidal supernova,
with black hole pupil
and stellar explosion iris

suspended, hanged,
a marionette
of the exosphere

I can hear
photosynthesis
in the sunlight

and the gentle suckling
of teats deep
into the flesh of earth

have you ever
tasted the sweetness of
an intergalactic catastrophe?

the saccharine plasma
explodes from your arteries
like solar flares

cicadas call me,
sweetly staccato from
trembling tongues

in cupped palms
we thirst for magician's rain
before it disintegrates to water.