Search All Winners

One night during this time my mother started asking me questions, out of the blue, about William Faulkner. She was taking a night-school course and wanted to write about the Nobel laureate from her hometown, New Albany. Why Faulkner, I asked, of all the writers in the world to care about? Why not Richard Wright, James Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston? “We’re kin to some Faulkners,” she said. I laughed out loud and informed her that this Faulkner was white. My mother smiled and said, “So?”

I found a white stone on the beach

inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.

All night I’d slept in fits and starts,

my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.

And then morning. And then a walk,

the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.

I felt its calm power as I held it

and wished a wish I cannot tell.

It fit in my hand like a hand gently

holding my hand through a sleepless night.

A stone so like, so unlike,

all the others it could only be mine.

The worldess white stone of my life!

“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?”

“He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint – what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “ Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe… I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”

“Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”

Orion shot rabbits, but to tell the truth, it almost sickened Cora to clean and cook them. Stripped of its pelt, the taut body glistened. The small legs put her in mind of fingers. On her plate all she could think of was the pleading eyes. Somehow this did not trouble her about chickens, which she took the pains to behead herself, sometimes chasing the headless flapping bird around the chopping block. Orion plucked the bird for her, and the feathers were saved for a sleeping crib for Madge.

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.