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.
BEDER: (fuming) Independence Day fireworks. How can the Israelis call it Independence Day and not choke on the words? They celebrate forcibly removing people from their homes? Killing men, women, children? This is cause for a party?
ADHAM: Let’s not get political.
BEDER: Who’s getting political?
The hay rake’s rattle, the stunned sputter of a moccasin
Slung in the blades, the mid-gloam crickets sending
Their codes as though from a nearby country of dreamers.
Each sound found its shape – low drip into mud beneath
The leaking spigot, scrape of sparrows stowing twigs
In the eaves, the combines fading, unzipping the bean
Rows and back again, and the wind-combed drift
Of dust in the field, which is where I can hear it most
Clearly now, my pointing the direction away
From that town, saying there I am, there I am, there I am…
There was an old buzka on Luther Street known as the Cat Woman, not because she kept cats but because she disposed of the neighborhood’s excess kittens. Fathers would bring them in cardboard boxes at night after the children were asleep and she would drown them in her wash machine. The wash machine was in the basement, an ancient model with a galvanized-metal tub that stood on legs and had a wringer. A thick cord connected it to a socket that hung from the ceiling and when she turned it on the light bulb in the basement would flicker and water begin to pour.
“He has something of mine,” the man said.
With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”
“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”
“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”
Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.
There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –
a field of starfish, turning slowly
like cogs inside
a water-watch, wound by a sea river;
the star’s five fingers tremble and
reach for a clam’s book of meat,
into which it will inject a sedative
and then its stomach.
In The City, escaped parrots colonize
a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that
In a bag? More hits after this…
And so with the last of my birthday cash
I ordered the Abracadabra Kit.
The ad promised rivals would flee me in terror
and pictured grownups swooning (eyes X’s)
as a boy in tails drove swords through his sister.
I checked the mailbox every day and dreamed
the damage I’d do the Knights, the magic words
I’d speak to blanket them with zits, shrivel
their cocks, cripple their families and pets.
The kit came and of course was crap.
BEDER: (fuming) Independence Day fireworks. How can the Israelis call it Independence Day and not choke on the words? They celebrate forcibly removing people from their homes? Killing men, women, children? This is cause for a party?
ADHAM: Let’s not get political.
BEDER: Who’s getting political?
The hay rake’s rattle, the stunned sputter of a moccasin
Slung in the blades, the mid-gloam crickets sending
Their codes as though from a nearby country of dreamers.
Each sound found its shape – low drip into mud beneath
The leaking spigot, scrape of sparrows stowing twigs
In the eaves, the combines fading, unzipping the bean
Rows and back again, and the wind-combed drift
Of dust in the field, which is where I can hear it most
Clearly now, my pointing the direction away
From that town, saying there I am, there I am, there I am…
There was an old buzka on Luther Street known as the Cat Woman, not because she kept cats but because she disposed of the neighborhood’s excess kittens. Fathers would bring them in cardboard boxes at night after the children were asleep and she would drown them in her wash machine. The wash machine was in the basement, an ancient model with a galvanized-metal tub that stood on legs and had a wringer. A thick cord connected it to a socket that hung from the ceiling and when she turned it on the light bulb in the basement would flicker and water begin to pour.
“He has something of mine,” the man said.
With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”
“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”
“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”
Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.
There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –
a field of starfish, turning slowly
like cogs inside
a water-watch, wound by a sea river;
the star’s five fingers tremble and
reach for a clam’s book of meat,
into which it will inject a sedative
and then its stomach.
In The City, escaped parrots colonize
a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that
In a bag? More hits after this…
And so with the last of my birthday cash
I ordered the Abracadabra Kit.
The ad promised rivals would flee me in terror
and pictured grownups swooning (eyes X’s)
as a boy in tails drove swords through his sister.
I checked the mailbox every day and dreamed
the damage I’d do the Knights, the magic words
I’d speak to blanket them with zits, shrivel
their cocks, cripple their families and pets.
The kit came and of course was crap.