Whiting Award Winners

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?”

A bobwhite sounds through larks

and jays, the wringing-wet shade,

as in the first world, before Adam

understood their sharp iambs,

when the refrain could’ve been

anything’s: plant or animal, or light

so pure it sang. Even now

how absolute, how wondrously

primitive the singularity rings –

shouting its name, its name,

its name… till from elsewhere

an echo swells through April-thick wings

as if addressing some question

on the presence of parallels.

The address books Englehart’s stocked were second-rate. Their covers were simulated leather, their bindings indifferently glued. Mary stood frowning over one of the books, bound in oxblood plastic, emblazoned with the golden word Addresses, the final s of which had already begun to chip. It was such a flimsy thing, so beneath her, that she felt foolish even looking at it. She glanced around, saw that no one was watching, and almost before she knew she would do it she slipped the address book into her bag. Her forehead burned. Calmly, walking as herself, in heels and pearl earrings, she left the store with the tacky little address book hidden in her bag, its price tag still attached. The tag, when she looked at it, said that the book had cost ninety-nine cents.

It happened inside a single room.

For me. Forgive me

If you feel with this assertion I diminish you

Or the integrity of your story.

But it’s true: I was nowhere, there,

On the frayed brown carpet, between two beds—

Mine to the right, my brother’s to the left—

Counting the tiny holes

In the radiator cover, dark eyes

Piercing through painted-white metal.

When I looked around, I saw nothing that I was.

Not even other nothings, like me.

Do you think I take from you?

I do not take from you, I am you.

but we are still at sea     we climbed into the rocking

boat again     the things that we could not afford

to remember in the vernacular      

                                                                       sun

                                                            sinking backwards into the world’s

                                                            light industry    Eros in idle hands

A hole was worn into the snow, and I fit into it, arms and legs drawn up in front of me. The dog snatched and pulled at my mouth, eyes, hair; his breath clouded the air around us, but I did not feel its heat, or smell the blood sinking down between hairs of his muzzle. I watched my mitten come off in his teeth and sail upward, and it seemed unfair then and very sad that one hand should freeze all alone; I lifted the second mitten off and threw it away, then turned my face back again, overtaken suddenly by loneliness. A loud river ran in my ears, dragging me under.