Whiting Award Winners
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
We do not mean to complain. We know how it is.
In older, even sadder cultures the worst possible sorts
have been playing hot and cold with people’s lives
for much longer. Like Perrow says,
We’ll all have baboon hearts one of these days.
We wintered with ample fuel and real tomatoes.
We were allowed to roam, sniffing and chewing
at the tufted crust. We were let to breathe.
That is, we respirated. Now the soft clocks
have gorged themselves on our time. Yet
as our hair blanches and comes out
in hanks, we can tell it is nearly spring –
the students shed their black coats
on the green; we begin to see shade.
Lo, this is the breastbone’s embraceable light.
We are here. Still breathing and constellated.
It was 1943. The agency that helped smuggle Jews into Switzerland had sent them, this third trip, to collect money from the rich and—for the time being—protected Jews in the Italian Zone. Tomorrow they would be returning with enough money for six families to escape to Geneva. Maxim wondered what this farm girl would make of such information. He wondered when his name, and his mother’s and brother’s, would reach the top of the list. He wondered if she would do more than kiss him if he tried. He looked at her, her full lips and pretty face. She turned onto her side and pulled her jacket closer.
In his bath my son looks half-
drowned,
lying so still,
his hair a scarf of weed,
his eyes closed,
and only the water breathing.
He practices
in his porcelain bed
his resting,
rehearsing
until the water takes cold
and he shivers a little against it.
That I commune with the dead as I oil your feet. My house at the throat of the river, the door to this world, I wait for you. That I ask of the spirit and receive the knowledges: yerbabuena, vela de virgen, baño de alhucema. Cut the joint at the hoof & fatten the soup. Accept this offering, thank the plant. That I love you with the knowledge of our ways lost to violence. That you will call me up from the silt in your bones.
“Now, because it’s his birthday and he wasn’t supposed to make it this far, he asked that we throw him a bash, like the old Augusta blowouts, and he asked that at midnight we shoot him dead.”
I stared at him. He didn’t waver.
“We figure you’re the best guy to do it,” he said, slapping a hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve never even shot a gun,” I said.
He pulled up my shirt and took the gun from the back of my pants. “It’s pretty basic. Point and pull. You’ve seen the movies.” He aimed the pistol at the portrait of the old man, said “Bang” and faked the recoil, then blew imaginary smoke from the barrel.
I have a truly horrible dream which invariably occurs on the nights I am Lenoreless in my bed. I am attempting to stimulate the clitoris of Queen Victoria with the back of a tortoise-shell hairbrush. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her waist and my head. Her enormous cottage-cheese thighs rest heavy on my shoulders, spill out in front of my sweating face. The clanking of pounds of jewelry is heard as she shifts to offer herself at best advantage. There are odors. The Queen’s impatient breathing is thunder above me as I kneel at the throne. Time passes. Finally her voice is heard, overhead, metalled with disgust and frustration: “We are not aroused.” I am punched in the arm by a guard and flung into a pit at the bottom of which boil the figures of countless mice. I awake with a mouth full of fur. Begging for more time. A ribbed brush.
We do not mean to complain. We know how it is.
In older, even sadder cultures the worst possible sorts
have been playing hot and cold with people’s lives
for much longer. Like Perrow says,
We’ll all have baboon hearts one of these days.
We wintered with ample fuel and real tomatoes.
We were allowed to roam, sniffing and chewing
at the tufted crust. We were let to breathe.
That is, we respirated. Now the soft clocks
have gorged themselves on our time. Yet
as our hair blanches and comes out
in hanks, we can tell it is nearly spring –
the students shed their black coats
on the green; we begin to see shade.
Lo, this is the breastbone’s embraceable light.
We are here. Still breathing and constellated.
It was 1943. The agency that helped smuggle Jews into Switzerland had sent them, this third trip, to collect money from the rich and—for the time being—protected Jews in the Italian Zone. Tomorrow they would be returning with enough money for six families to escape to Geneva. Maxim wondered what this farm girl would make of such information. He wondered when his name, and his mother’s and brother’s, would reach the top of the list. He wondered if she would do more than kiss him if he tried. He looked at her, her full lips and pretty face. She turned onto her side and pulled her jacket closer.
In his bath my son looks half-
drowned,
lying so still,
his hair a scarf of weed,
his eyes closed,
and only the water breathing.
He practices
in his porcelain bed
his resting,
rehearsing
until the water takes cold
and he shivers a little against it.
That I commune with the dead as I oil your feet. My house at the throat of the river, the door to this world, I wait for you. That I ask of the spirit and receive the knowledges: yerbabuena, vela de virgen, baño de alhucema. Cut the joint at the hoof & fatten the soup. Accept this offering, thank the plant. That I love you with the knowledge of our ways lost to violence. That you will call me up from the silt in your bones.
“Now, because it’s his birthday and he wasn’t supposed to make it this far, he asked that we throw him a bash, like the old Augusta blowouts, and he asked that at midnight we shoot him dead.”
I stared at him. He didn’t waver.
“We figure you’re the best guy to do it,” he said, slapping a hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve never even shot a gun,” I said.
He pulled up my shirt and took the gun from the back of my pants. “It’s pretty basic. Point and pull. You’ve seen the movies.” He aimed the pistol at the portrait of the old man, said “Bang” and faked the recoil, then blew imaginary smoke from the barrel.
I have a truly horrible dream which invariably occurs on the nights I am Lenoreless in my bed. I am attempting to stimulate the clitoris of Queen Victoria with the back of a tortoise-shell hairbrush. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her waist and my head. Her enormous cottage-cheese thighs rest heavy on my shoulders, spill out in front of my sweating face. The clanking of pounds of jewelry is heard as she shifts to offer herself at best advantage. There are odors. The Queen’s impatient breathing is thunder above me as I kneel at the throne. Time passes. Finally her voice is heard, overhead, metalled with disgust and frustration: “We are not aroused.” I am punched in the arm by a guard and flung into a pit at the bottom of which boil the figures of countless mice. I awake with a mouth full of fur. Begging for more time. A ribbed brush.