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.
Outside, my grandfather wheeling
a pesticide tank
from tree to tree, spraying everything
with thick, white foam –
bark, leaf, apple flesh –
salting the garden
with handfuls of red sand, dissolving
aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm
as thick as rope. Gone
in an instant, emerging
from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving
an axe, bright blade, pine handle,
to eliminate
a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.
O ordinary axe
We will rebuild our city, yes—we will, we will build a new city in the image of our old city, a city that will withstand whatever nature sends against it, a city that will rise up into the sky, our mayor said, pointing, his arm trembling, a city raised up into the clouds, a cloud city, a city of the air currents, of the jet streams, of warm fronts and cold fronts, a city that will harness the power of the weather and put it to good use, only good, constructive use.
My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.
When in 1679 a London woman swung at Tyburn for bestiality, her canine partner in crime suffered the same punishment on the same grounds. King James I ordered a bear that had killed a child to be baited to death, and rural shepherds frequently hanged dogs caught worrying their flocks. The Merchant of Venice included a reference to “a wolf, hanged for human slaughter” sufficiently cursory to suggest that Shakespeare’s audience recognized animals as appropriate participants in formal judicial proceedings.
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?”
The Banker trails behind me with his abacus
and crowd of yes-men. I hear
the gold coins rub together in his vest.
The stoplights remind me. And the scars
on my ankles and the nails in my mouth.
Once my father pointed his finger at me.
Once my mother kissed me on the lips in winter.
I could have been a man like those men
on the roof, eyes narrowed at me
like diamond cutters. In surgical gowns
and crucifix tie clips, tight bands of wires
wound beneath their chests –
they remind me of me. All in sync
they cup their ears to the antenna.
Quiet. The Jew Levine is coming to collect
with his chisels and his sack of flesh.
Outside, my grandfather wheeling
a pesticide tank
from tree to tree, spraying everything
with thick, white foam –
bark, leaf, apple flesh –
salting the garden
with handfuls of red sand, dissolving
aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm
as thick as rope. Gone
in an instant, emerging
from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving
an axe, bright blade, pine handle,
to eliminate
a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.
O ordinary axe
We will rebuild our city, yes—we will, we will build a new city in the image of our old city, a city that will withstand whatever nature sends against it, a city that will rise up into the sky, our mayor said, pointing, his arm trembling, a city raised up into the clouds, a cloud city, a city of the air currents, of the jet streams, of warm fronts and cold fronts, a city that will harness the power of the weather and put it to good use, only good, constructive use.
My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.
When in 1679 a London woman swung at Tyburn for bestiality, her canine partner in crime suffered the same punishment on the same grounds. King James I ordered a bear that had killed a child to be baited to death, and rural shepherds frequently hanged dogs caught worrying their flocks. The Merchant of Venice included a reference to “a wolf, hanged for human slaughter” sufficiently cursory to suggest that Shakespeare’s audience recognized animals as appropriate participants in formal judicial proceedings.
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?”
The Banker trails behind me with his abacus
and crowd of yes-men. I hear
the gold coins rub together in his vest.
The stoplights remind me. And the scars
on my ankles and the nails in my mouth.
Once my father pointed his finger at me.
Once my mother kissed me on the lips in winter.
I could have been a man like those men
on the roof, eyes narrowed at me
like diamond cutters. In surgical gowns
and crucifix tie clips, tight bands of wires
wound beneath their chests –
they remind me of me. All in sync
they cup their ears to the antenna.
Quiet. The Jew Levine is coming to collect
with his chisels and his sack of flesh.