Competition

Third Prize

Darts
by Brett Dionysius
Woodend, Qld

His big sister urged him to hide when the Mormons
Wheeled their ladies' bikes onto the gravel driveway.
Bald tires scraped on the loose pebbles; black snakes
Sawing off their skins on an outcrop of baked granite.
Locking the wooden door, they fled into the neat centre
Of their dull white worker's cottage. An aura of stillness
Hung over their heads; they froze as if the power of God's
Children could detect the living from behind weatherboard
Walls. Their knocks thudded into the hardwood, like clods
Of rich earth banging on a coffin's lid. When there was no
Revelation forthcoming, the duo lent against their mother's
HR Premier & took up the plastic darts. Inside, the siblings
Were speechless as the pair torpedoed steel-tipped arrows
Into the gold bulls eye of the board's soft, pulpy halo.

Highly Commended

Variations on Rain in the Time of Drought
by Mark Miller
Shoalhaven Heads, NSW

I

A trick of light in the kitchen -
a false promise through the pane -
paddocks momentarily are a yellow fluorescence,
thunder and the bounding dog barks
at the empty sky.

2

Cows coalesce by the dairy,
they lie down in hollows
beneath pockets of bitten trees,
beneath a screen-lit and low
upside-down sea of bruised nimbus.

3

Out of the charged sky red with dust
drops clatter on the corrugated-iron roof
like flung coins.
Yellow-tailed black cockatoos
rend the sky apart,
they helter-skelter up the dry creek
bed screeching something about rain.

4

In the back-lit paddocks
birds skirmish in the low branches of acacia,
starch-white egrets scatter
like bits of freshly minted paper.

5

Dust puffs on the cracked earth of the dam –
on its rim a stray calf’s head
is loud with flies.

6

Tipsy with rain,
galahs skirl in gum-blossom,
they hang upside-down on fence-wire
like trapeze-artists.

7

The wind-storm passes –
dry leaves and litter
are scattered against the homestead door
like uncollected letters,
like the bills left unopened
on the verandah floor.