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.
Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:
Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.
Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.
Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.
Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.
The target is yourself becoming brave.
Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –
Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.
After some time my husband reached over to hold my hand, which reminded me that at least there was this, at least we still had hands that remembered how to love each other, two bone-and-flesh flaps that hadn't complicated their simple love by speaking or thinking or being disappointed or having memories. They just held and were held and that is all. Oh, to be a hand.
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.
Time moved both fast and slow, and neither speed synced up with her fears as she stood at the head of the line. The tellers looked too chipper for a Monday morning. Did they even have money on Mondays? she wondered. Shouldn’t she have come on a Friday? She couldn’t remember why she opened the stickup note, just that she did, and that her boyfriend, the first and only boy she’d ever dated, was the one who had penned it: This is a stickup. Give me all your monie.
The misspelling stopped her.
“Next in line,” a teller called.
Knowledge herself had quit school in the ninth grade but she couldn’t believe that he had misspelled money. “What kind of an idiot can’t spell money?” she told me. “How fucking stupid do you have to be? And if he’s that stupid, how stupid am I for robbing a bank for him?”
THERESA
I’m worried she’ll be a fish out of water.
ROBERTA
When do we meet her? When’re they movin’?
THERESA
Not now. Soon. We’ll see. They’re waiting to see if Mingjing can transfer jobs.
ROBERTA puts down her cookie.
ROBERTA
What’s her name?
THERESA
Minjung.
ROBERTA
Theresa.
THERESA sips tea.
THERESA
She’s in architecture, works for a big firm out there
ROBERTA
(indicating the under-eye skin) Those dark circles, no wonder.
THERESA
But she might give it up and teach.
ROBERTA
You seen her only once?
THERESA
Tim never said any—why would I think
ROBERTA
Such a rush.
THERESA
My brain’s exploded.
ROBERTA
I knew it: how far gone is she?
Note: A male actor plays the roles of both THERESA and her son TIM. A second male actor plays the roles of both ROBERTA and her son ROBBIE.
A planeload of insurance salesmen, blown off course,
Discovers a tribe who believe an elephant-
In-the-distance is the same size as a gnat-in-the-eye.
This should cause trouble in a hunt. But tribespeople
Merely flick the pesky trumpeter away,
While the gnat – felled by clouds of arrows – feeds
The tribe for weeks. Faced by a lion, tribesmen run
Until its head is small enough to squish. Muscular
Warriors are found dead, pierced by mosquito-needles
Ear-to-ear. Everything here is as it seems.
The stick-in-water, drawn out, remains crooked
As a boomerang. Mountain and molehill are identical.
Tragedies that crush Americans – love’s waterbed
Popping, parents dropped into the scalding pot of age-
Require only that the sufferer walk away. “It’s not so awful,”
Tribal healers say. “With every step, troubles shrink;
Their howling dwindles to a buzz; their fangs shrivel to the size
Of pollen grains. Reach out. Brush them away. You see?”
Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:
Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.
Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.
Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.
Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.
The target is yourself becoming brave.
Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –
Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.
After some time my husband reached over to hold my hand, which reminded me that at least there was this, at least we still had hands that remembered how to love each other, two bone-and-flesh flaps that hadn't complicated their simple love by speaking or thinking or being disappointed or having memories. They just held and were held and that is all. Oh, to be a hand.
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.
Time moved both fast and slow, and neither speed synced up with her fears as she stood at the head of the line. The tellers looked too chipper for a Monday morning. Did they even have money on Mondays? she wondered. Shouldn’t she have come on a Friday? She couldn’t remember why she opened the stickup note, just that she did, and that her boyfriend, the first and only boy she’d ever dated, was the one who had penned it: This is a stickup. Give me all your monie.
The misspelling stopped her.
“Next in line,” a teller called.
Knowledge herself had quit school in the ninth grade but she couldn’t believe that he had misspelled money. “What kind of an idiot can’t spell money?” she told me. “How fucking stupid do you have to be? And if he’s that stupid, how stupid am I for robbing a bank for him?”
THERESA
I’m worried she’ll be a fish out of water.
ROBERTA
When do we meet her? When’re they movin’?
THERESA
Not now. Soon. We’ll see. They’re waiting to see if Mingjing can transfer jobs.
ROBERTA puts down her cookie.
ROBERTA
What’s her name?
THERESA
Minjung.
ROBERTA
Theresa.
THERESA sips tea.
THERESA
She’s in architecture, works for a big firm out there
ROBERTA
(indicating the under-eye skin) Those dark circles, no wonder.
THERESA
But she might give it up and teach.
ROBERTA
You seen her only once?
THERESA
Tim never said any—why would I think
ROBERTA
Such a rush.
THERESA
My brain’s exploded.
ROBERTA
I knew it: how far gone is she?
Note: A male actor plays the roles of both THERESA and her son TIM. A second male actor plays the roles of both ROBERTA and her son ROBBIE.
A planeload of insurance salesmen, blown off course,
Discovers a tribe who believe an elephant-
In-the-distance is the same size as a gnat-in-the-eye.
This should cause trouble in a hunt. But tribespeople
Merely flick the pesky trumpeter away,
While the gnat – felled by clouds of arrows – feeds
The tribe for weeks. Faced by a lion, tribesmen run
Until its head is small enough to squish. Muscular
Warriors are found dead, pierced by mosquito-needles
Ear-to-ear. Everything here is as it seems.
The stick-in-water, drawn out, remains crooked
As a boomerang. Mountain and molehill are identical.
Tragedies that crush Americans – love’s waterbed
Popping, parents dropped into the scalding pot of age-
Require only that the sufferer walk away. “It’s not so awful,”
Tribal healers say. “With every step, troubles shrink;
Their howling dwindles to a buzz; their fangs shrivel to the size
Of pollen grains. Reach out. Brush them away. You see?”