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.
There’s a man inside this woman, and he’s alive. But he can’t speak—she can’t speak—the face is peeled back, the skull empty, and now the cap of bone is being plastered back in place, and now the skin is being stitched shut. The autopsy is over—she’s closed, she’s done—and he’s still in there, with her, in another country, with the smell of shit and blood that’s never going to go away, and he’s not himself at all, he’s her, he’s Gloria Luby—bloated, full of gas, fat and white and dead forever.
Lewis Fletcher was waiting to be discharged from the Ventura County Social Model Detoxification Facility. Nobody could explain this name to him. “Social” as opposed to what? Asocial? Antisocial? Unsocial? Yesterday, they—or at least this guy Bobby—told him he’d be able to walk right out come nine o’clock this morning. Walk right out to freedom. Sky. Sidewalk underfoot. Well-aimed sun. Coffee shops. Then, Bobby said, some stuff about him came in over the computer, and now it was known he’d had too many alcohol-related offenses to be released on his own recognizance.
Dear Yu Honor
Yu may rmember me when yu visits prison
here I am Walter Boyd Leadbelly #42738
yo best big niger from Sugarland Farm
wit my stella guitar and songs yu like
I play it all like a black machine for yu loud an slow
Down in the valley What a frend we have in
Jesus an I Sugarland shuffle like pickin cotton far as
eye cn see I need my freedom like yu said yu was gone give me
yur honor all I need a second chance rmembr me
yu sed I was som niger som niger need they pardon
GOVERNOR
thank yu for yo kind kind hand yo wisdum.
Copyright 2004 by Tyehimba Jess. Published by Verse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books.
The deaf hear only in their dreams. I am sure
I can hear nothing. My how the mountain leaps
towards the sea and the little village below.
Who sang for the white plate my father tossed
at my sister’s shadow? What funeral is held
for a broken compass? When cutting onions,
leave a candle lit somewhere near an old man
holding his wife in a napkin. In the torn light of evening,
there is enough treason for everybody. Excuse me,
I should say something about the beauty of cranes.
Once in a sycamore I tossed a brick at a boy’s head.
It opened like the sea. I think I saw a crane.
Cole claimed to remember the good times between my parents. But I didn’t. Seemed like they were always breaking up to make up. After their big fights, they usually got back together with a little ritual: Al Green, a bottle of red wine, and a carton of Chinese noodles. Sometimes they would read aloud to each other from one of their favorite writers, Camus or Richard Wright. Other times they would just stand in the living room, lights off, swaying to the soul music, kissing, and whispering to each other secrets Cole and I would never know.
There’s a man inside this woman, and he’s alive. But he can’t speak—she can’t speak—the face is peeled back, the skull empty, and now the cap of bone is being plastered back in place, and now the skin is being stitched shut. The autopsy is over—she’s closed, she’s done—and he’s still in there, with her, in another country, with the smell of shit and blood that’s never going to go away, and he’s not himself at all, he’s her, he’s Gloria Luby—bloated, full of gas, fat and white and dead forever.
Lewis Fletcher was waiting to be discharged from the Ventura County Social Model Detoxification Facility. Nobody could explain this name to him. “Social” as opposed to what? Asocial? Antisocial? Unsocial? Yesterday, they—or at least this guy Bobby—told him he’d be able to walk right out come nine o’clock this morning. Walk right out to freedom. Sky. Sidewalk underfoot. Well-aimed sun. Coffee shops. Then, Bobby said, some stuff about him came in over the computer, and now it was known he’d had too many alcohol-related offenses to be released on his own recognizance.
Dear Yu Honor
Yu may rmember me when yu visits prison
here I am Walter Boyd Leadbelly #42738
yo best big niger from Sugarland Farm
wit my stella guitar and songs yu like
I play it all like a black machine for yu loud an slow
Down in the valley What a frend we have in
Jesus an I Sugarland shuffle like pickin cotton far as
eye cn see I need my freedom like yu said yu was gone give me
yur honor all I need a second chance rmembr me
yu sed I was som niger som niger need they pardon
GOVERNOR
thank yu for yo kind kind hand yo wisdum.
Copyright 2004 by Tyehimba Jess. Published by Verse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books.
The deaf hear only in their dreams. I am sure
I can hear nothing. My how the mountain leaps
towards the sea and the little village below.
Who sang for the white plate my father tossed
at my sister’s shadow? What funeral is held
for a broken compass? When cutting onions,
leave a candle lit somewhere near an old man
holding his wife in a napkin. In the torn light of evening,
there is enough treason for everybody. Excuse me,
I should say something about the beauty of cranes.
Once in a sycamore I tossed a brick at a boy’s head.
It opened like the sea. I think I saw a crane.
Cole claimed to remember the good times between my parents. But I didn’t. Seemed like they were always breaking up to make up. After their big fights, they usually got back together with a little ritual: Al Green, a bottle of red wine, and a carton of Chinese noodles. Sometimes they would read aloud to each other from one of their favorite writers, Camus or Richard Wright. Other times they would just stand in the living room, lights off, swaying to the soul music, kissing, and whispering to each other secrets Cole and I would never know.