JESUS FINCH
JESUS FINCH BY TOM MILNER
The enigmatic ‘Jesus’ Finch is a legend within Birmingham’s homeless community. Preacher, oddball and regular police target, he keeps to himself. Until one day, when the narrator helps Jesus reconnect with an old flame and discovers he may or may not have once been in a relationship with a pop star. The judges described Jesus Finch as ‘an electric story full of narrative propulsion, energy and strong characterisation’.
You can read an extract from the story below.
TOM MILNER
Tom Milner is a groundworker by day and a novelist by night. His work focuses on the intertwining relationships of so-called ordinary people, shining a light on those who, either by chance or circumstance, live in the shadows of society. He’s a member of Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 programme.
Jesus Finch
The first time I saw Jesus he was running through New Street Station with his trousers round his ankles, spanking his bare arse and yelling about what only God knows. With the two police officers chasing him the whole thing reminded me of Scooby-Do. It even had the cartoon ending: Jesus zapped with a taser, flapping around like a beached fish as white foam frothed out of his mouth. I’d heard rumours about him way before that, though: ghost stories told at soup kitchens and down the darkest of dark alleyways. Some claimed he was from the future, that he was over three hundred years old, that his hair grew sideways and that he was secretly a millionaire, playing homeless as some kind of performance art.
After that first time I started seeing him everywhere. At Pigeon Park and the soup kitchen on Colmore Row; outside shelters and the kebab shops that gave us their leftovers at closing time. I saw him in the streets, preaching his sermons, shouting out loud to anyone close enough to hear. It was those public lectures that earned him the nickname. Everything I knew about Jesus had been attached to him without his consent; a sticky-weed of gossip wrapped around his head and body, tangled enough that he’d stopped trying to wriggle free.
He never asked for money or help. No one ever saw him sleep. He wasn’t friends with anyone. He never took drugs or sold them. He never looked people in the eye. He never said anything unless he was shouting it, wading into traffic and shops, not stopping until either the police came or he lost patience with trying.
‘WHAT YOU DONT UNDERSTAND,’ I heard him shouting once; he was outside the Bullring, trousers round his ankles, being led away by security guards. ‘IS THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR THE THINGS YOU DO.’
I’d tried to speak to him a couple of times; when the charity girls offered me an extra slice of bread in exchange for introducing myself—only he looked straight through me, focused solely on his cup of tomato soup and a pocket of empty space in front of him; his staring eyes shark-black, spots of light in them like lone stars.
Other shortlisted stories:
The Brunel Prize Winner
Rowan is a poet and tree surgeon living in East London. His work has recently been featured in 14 Magazine and Acumen. His poem ‘Wild Ghazal’ won second prize in the Shelley Memorial Project’s 2025 competition. He is currently working on a new pamphlet of compromised, radical ecopoems.
