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.
Egrets picketing the spines of cattle in fields edged
with common tansy. Flowers my father gathered
for my mother to chew. To induce abortion. A common,
cosmopolitan agnostoid lithofacies naked in the foothills. I love
the character of your intelligence, its cast as well as pitch.
Border wide without marginal spines. At high angles
to the inferred shoreline.
When the ferry berthed at Picton, the American was to purchase two one-way tickets back to Wellington; one under Healey’s name and one under his own real name; he was at present travelling under a false name. He would pass over both these tickets to Healey and then disappear for good. Healey would deposit the American’s ticket in a rubbish bin on board. Then at a certain point in the voyage, when it was dark and they were towards the middle of the Strait—this was important, the American had told him, because of the currents which might easily drag a body far out to sea—Healey was to raise the alarm that he had just seen a man jump overboard.
The ferry would most likely be stopped and Healey would have to take a role in looking for the missing man. He would have to be ready to indicate how the figure fell and from where exactly, what he was wearing, what he looked like, and in none of these details should he be too precise. It was dark. No one else was on this part of the deck when it happened and Healey himself was on an upper deck and saw it more or less out of the corner of his eye. No, the man did not shout or make any noise as he jumped.
It was 1943. The agency that helped smuggle Jews into Switzerland had sent them, this third trip, to collect money from the rich and—for the time being—protected Jews in the Italian Zone. Tomorrow they would be returning with enough money for six families to escape to Geneva. Maxim wondered what this farm girl would make of such information. He wondered when his name, and his mother’s and brother’s, would reach the top of the list. He wondered if she would do more than kiss him if he tried. He looked at her, her full lips and pretty face. She turned onto her side and pulled her jacket closer.
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope. They got out of the EMS truck, as usual moving much too slowly in our opinion, and the fat one said under his breath, “This ain’t TV, folks, this is how fast we go.” He was carrying the heavy respirator and cardiac unit past the bushes that had grown monstrous and over the erupting lawn, tame and immaculate thirteen months earlier when the trouble began.
What is the difference between beautiful girls and ordinary ones? My face was symmetrical. I’d taken Accutane. I wore the right things. None of it made a difference next to Tarryn. She had a shimmer about her, a light that I could never fully understand. I couldn’t even make eye contact with her. It was like staring at the headlights of a car on a dark road. Later, in my sorority, and even later at my job, I’d meet other women like her and wonder how they were made.
I have a garden in my brain
shaped like a maze
I lose myself
in, it seems. They only look for me
sometimes. I don’t like my dreams.
The nurses quarrel over where I am
hiding. I hear from inside
a bush. One is crisp
and cuts; one pinches. I’d like to push
them each somewhere.
They both think it’s funny
here. The laughter sounds like diesels.
I won’t come out because I’m lazy.
You start to like the needles.
You start to want to crazy.
Egrets picketing the spines of cattle in fields edged
with common tansy. Flowers my father gathered
for my mother to chew. To induce abortion. A common,
cosmopolitan agnostoid lithofacies naked in the foothills. I love
the character of your intelligence, its cast as well as pitch.
Border wide without marginal spines. At high angles
to the inferred shoreline.
When the ferry berthed at Picton, the American was to purchase two one-way tickets back to Wellington; one under Healey’s name and one under his own real name; he was at present travelling under a false name. He would pass over both these tickets to Healey and then disappear for good. Healey would deposit the American’s ticket in a rubbish bin on board. Then at a certain point in the voyage, when it was dark and they were towards the middle of the Strait—this was important, the American had told him, because of the currents which might easily drag a body far out to sea—Healey was to raise the alarm that he had just seen a man jump overboard.
The ferry would most likely be stopped and Healey would have to take a role in looking for the missing man. He would have to be ready to indicate how the figure fell and from where exactly, what he was wearing, what he looked like, and in none of these details should he be too precise. It was dark. No one else was on this part of the deck when it happened and Healey himself was on an upper deck and saw it more or less out of the corner of his eye. No, the man did not shout or make any noise as he jumped.
It was 1943. The agency that helped smuggle Jews into Switzerland had sent them, this third trip, to collect money from the rich and—for the time being—protected Jews in the Italian Zone. Tomorrow they would be returning with enough money for six families to escape to Geneva. Maxim wondered what this farm girl would make of such information. He wondered when his name, and his mother’s and brother’s, would reach the top of the list. He wondered if she would do more than kiss him if he tried. He looked at her, her full lips and pretty face. She turned onto her side and pulled her jacket closer.
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope. They got out of the EMS truck, as usual moving much too slowly in our opinion, and the fat one said under his breath, “This ain’t TV, folks, this is how fast we go.” He was carrying the heavy respirator and cardiac unit past the bushes that had grown monstrous and over the erupting lawn, tame and immaculate thirteen months earlier when the trouble began.
What is the difference between beautiful girls and ordinary ones? My face was symmetrical. I’d taken Accutane. I wore the right things. None of it made a difference next to Tarryn. She had a shimmer about her, a light that I could never fully understand. I couldn’t even make eye contact with her. It was like staring at the headlights of a car on a dark road. Later, in my sorority, and even later at my job, I’d meet other women like her and wonder how they were made.
I have a garden in my brain
shaped like a maze
I lose myself
in, it seems. They only look for me
sometimes. I don’t like my dreams.
The nurses quarrel over where I am
hiding. I hear from inside
a bush. One is crisp
and cuts; one pinches. I’d like to push
them each somewhere.
They both think it’s funny
here. The laughter sounds like diesels.
I won’t come out because I’m lazy.
You start to like the needles.
You start to want to crazy.