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.
I stood there perfectly still, just as I had sat for countless medical photographs: full face, turn to the left, the right, now a three-quarter shot to the left. I took a certain pride in knowing the routine so well. I’ve even seen some of these medical photographs in publications. Curiously, those sterile, bright photos are easy for me to look at. For one thing, I know that only doctors look at them, and perhaps I’m even slightly proud that I’m such an interesting case, worthy of documentation. Or maybe I do not really think it is me sitting there, Case 3, figure 6-A.
“What do I want you to do? You really want to know? I’ll tell you. Just look me in the eye and tell me one thing. Just do it. Tell me whether you and Cynthia have made love. Tell me. Go on.”
“The answer is no.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“I believe you,” she said quietly, and for a moment Richard thought it was over until she turned around and screamed at him, “THEN WHY DON’T YOU MAKE LOVE WITH ME?”
When he’d gone they’d kept each other’s ring. Charlotte wore his on a thread between her breasts, she was stunned to find he hadn’t died with her ring somewhere on him. Now she had them both when even one was one too many. Sometimes she put them in her mouth. She put them on her tongue, one inside the other. She bit down on them. Sometimes she smoothed the paper of the letters that he’d written like shrouds over her face as she lay still. Sometimes she tried to hear his voice. She missed his face. She longed to know what it was doing. She held his shaving brush, she tried to touch her stomach with it but she couldn’t feel a thing beyond the cold. She tried to keep the locker closed so it would hold his smell but then she longed to hide herself away inside it. She couldn’t see his face.
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.
That night my daddy came in my room and sat the edge of my bed with his back to me, his long-john shirt whitening a space in the dark. He told me that had been no man at all, but a ghost, a Confederate soldier, and I stiffened in my iron bed. Here was thick with ghosts, he told me, and told me not to be afraid, but I was, that the first one I ever saw and me maybe four years old. After he left I cried with the blanket up over my head, listening for those ghost boots slapping up the stairs.
A friend asks, “What are you waiting for?
The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”
Maybe I am the straw.
Maybe I am hay. I made a list of rhyming words:
Bray, flay, array.
They all seemed to relate to farms, decaying things,
gray days, dismay.
I am recently reckless about making a display
of my unhappiness. Perhaps you may survey it.
Perhaps I may stray from it, go to the wrong home
by accident and say, “Oh! Here already?”
You know I’m fraying and just watch it.
You don’t even try to braid me together.
I stood there perfectly still, just as I had sat for countless medical photographs: full face, turn to the left, the right, now a three-quarter shot to the left. I took a certain pride in knowing the routine so well. I’ve even seen some of these medical photographs in publications. Curiously, those sterile, bright photos are easy for me to look at. For one thing, I know that only doctors look at them, and perhaps I’m even slightly proud that I’m such an interesting case, worthy of documentation. Or maybe I do not really think it is me sitting there, Case 3, figure 6-A.
“What do I want you to do? You really want to know? I’ll tell you. Just look me in the eye and tell me one thing. Just do it. Tell me whether you and Cynthia have made love. Tell me. Go on.”
“The answer is no.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“I believe you,” she said quietly, and for a moment Richard thought it was over until she turned around and screamed at him, “THEN WHY DON’T YOU MAKE LOVE WITH ME?”
When he’d gone they’d kept each other’s ring. Charlotte wore his on a thread between her breasts, she was stunned to find he hadn’t died with her ring somewhere on him. Now she had them both when even one was one too many. Sometimes she put them in her mouth. She put them on her tongue, one inside the other. She bit down on them. Sometimes she smoothed the paper of the letters that he’d written like shrouds over her face as she lay still. Sometimes she tried to hear his voice. She missed his face. She longed to know what it was doing. She held his shaving brush, she tried to touch her stomach with it but she couldn’t feel a thing beyond the cold. She tried to keep the locker closed so it would hold his smell but then she longed to hide herself away inside it. She couldn’t see his face.
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.
That night my daddy came in my room and sat the edge of my bed with his back to me, his long-john shirt whitening a space in the dark. He told me that had been no man at all, but a ghost, a Confederate soldier, and I stiffened in my iron bed. Here was thick with ghosts, he told me, and told me not to be afraid, but I was, that the first one I ever saw and me maybe four years old. After he left I cried with the blanket up over my head, listening for those ghost boots slapping up the stairs.
A friend asks, “What are you waiting for?
The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”
Maybe I am the straw.
Maybe I am hay. I made a list of rhyming words:
Bray, flay, array.
They all seemed to relate to farms, decaying things,
gray days, dismay.
I am recently reckless about making a display
of my unhappiness. Perhaps you may survey it.
Perhaps I may stray from it, go to the wrong home
by accident and say, “Oh! Here already?”
You know I’m fraying and just watch it.
You don’t even try to braid me together.