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.
PEACHES
If you are one of those people who come to shows just so you can cough your way through them, please take this time to unwrap your cough drops and remind your body to shut itself the fuck up. However, this is still a show that you are allowed to be a part of. If you feel like laughing, laugh. If you wanna shout, bitch, shout, we will gladly hold your mule. Talk to us if you want. This is your church. And for those of you who are quiet, obedient and unresponsive in your church, consider this yo black church, yo sanctuary, yo juke joint, yo kitchen table, yo trial shaker, yo money maker, yo elevator, yo resuscitator.
The police ask me to empty my pockets. I turn them inside out and lay my miserabilia on the table. Two policemen quite unashamedly feel my thighs and ass, which tickles me. With clinical concentration they examine the stuff on the table. It is an obscene invasion of my privacy, more so than if they had turned my asshole inside out and inspected it under a microscope—any microbiologist could tell you that there we are remarkably similar. In pockets turned inside out you can see how we differ.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.
thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride.
hyphy dancehall — no can
hear tings demur.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofer
whine mih curvature: cause a road slaughtah.
ain’t neck breaking like dutty
when she whine.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.
thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride. sih?
By our second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls in my Brownie troop had decided to kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909. Troop 909 was doomed from the first day of camp; they were white girls, their complexions a blend of ice cream: strawberry, vanilla. They turtled out from their bus in pairs, their rolled-up sleeping bags chromatized with Disney characters: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Mickey Mouse; or the generic ones cheap parents bought: washed-out rainbows, unicorns, curly-eyelashed frogs. Some clutched Igloo coolers and still others held on to stuffed toys like pacifiers, looking all around them like tourists determined to be dazzled.
The dog is God.
It knows it is God.
It is God living with God.
Even in the rain,
the esters, the pheromones,
calligraphy of the sacred,
the great head points into the wind,
the blood thrashes in the thick veins.
The language of the feces, urine,
species, rut, offal, decay –
nothing is hidden from the dog,
who keeps its own counsel,
leading you by the leash.
Often they seem to be falling forward
but I pretend not to notice
how well they use their bodies:
the girl, that tall delicate boy,
even the father in pink satin –
ardent, flashy. Now something scares me
and I turn away.
In the dream
they walk the beach –
my children and their father –
equally exposed, ridiculous suits
in the same ice-cream colors.
PEACHES
If you are one of those people who come to shows just so you can cough your way through them, please take this time to unwrap your cough drops and remind your body to shut itself the fuck up. However, this is still a show that you are allowed to be a part of. If you feel like laughing, laugh. If you wanna shout, bitch, shout, we will gladly hold your mule. Talk to us if you want. This is your church. And for those of you who are quiet, obedient and unresponsive in your church, consider this yo black church, yo sanctuary, yo juke joint, yo kitchen table, yo trial shaker, yo money maker, yo elevator, yo resuscitator.
The police ask me to empty my pockets. I turn them inside out and lay my miserabilia on the table. Two policemen quite unashamedly feel my thighs and ass, which tickles me. With clinical concentration they examine the stuff on the table. It is an obscene invasion of my privacy, more so than if they had turned my asshole inside out and inspected it under a microscope—any microbiologist could tell you that there we are remarkably similar. In pockets turned inside out you can see how we differ.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.
thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride.
hyphy dancehall — no can
hear tings demur.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofer
whine mih curvature: cause a road slaughtah.
ain’t neck breaking like dutty
when she whine.
titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.
thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride. sih?
By our second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls in my Brownie troop had decided to kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909. Troop 909 was doomed from the first day of camp; they were white girls, their complexions a blend of ice cream: strawberry, vanilla. They turtled out from their bus in pairs, their rolled-up sleeping bags chromatized with Disney characters: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Mickey Mouse; or the generic ones cheap parents bought: washed-out rainbows, unicorns, curly-eyelashed frogs. Some clutched Igloo coolers and still others held on to stuffed toys like pacifiers, looking all around them like tourists determined to be dazzled.
The dog is God.
It knows it is God.
It is God living with God.
Even in the rain,
the esters, the pheromones,
calligraphy of the sacred,
the great head points into the wind,
the blood thrashes in the thick veins.
The language of the feces, urine,
species, rut, offal, decay –
nothing is hidden from the dog,
who keeps its own counsel,
leading you by the leash.
Often they seem to be falling forward
but I pretend not to notice
how well they use their bodies:
the girl, that tall delicate boy,
even the father in pink satin –
ardent, flashy. Now something scares me
and I turn away.
In the dream
they walk the beach –
my children and their father –
equally exposed, ridiculous suits
in the same ice-cream colors.