Competition
2009 Winners
Joy Chambers & Reg Grundy Award – Open Age Other Poetry
Shell
by Ashley Capes
Bairnsdale, Vic
I've turned my back on it and
turned up the music,
like in a quintessential
road movie.
as evening sun paints
the sky a pink
very close to tomorrow,
the letterbox
gives up our names.
the man who
came to raid the
lemon tree watches
as exhaust melts
the air.
our house is a shell again
not precious
and beach-like, just
a knock for someone else to answer.
Between Barcaldine and Us
by Vanessa Page
Mitchelton, Qld
When the sky has turned to milk
and ordinariness has slunk to lows
I examine what I have orchestrated
simplistically, in a motel room far from you
working telephone text into dialects
and with hands, cellophane crisp
decoding your face - somewhere
between the silence of the gidyea
and the flickering passenger window
Disembodied, I'm selecting channels
and circumstance by remote control
caught up in beginnings, the texture of knots
and nudged soft by time, I continue it
there is no chance for you to rebut
even here, between Barcaldine and us
I'm ghosting in a town of workers' pubs
finding refuge in random characteristics
and one notion, that nine hours further
might travel the same paces, in boots
chosen for segue and familiarity
escargot neat, coiled and casting back
to the places we have populated;
red soil and headstones
