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.
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
I couldn’t move. The ground was tiny, an aerial map, rich in detail, and the wind tugged at my feet. What were the commands? Arch, I whispered. Arch arch arch. That was all I could remember. I stood up, gripping the side of the opening, my feet balanced on the metal bar beneath the doorway, resisting the steady rush of wind. The jumpmaster shouted again. I felt the pressure of his fingers. And then I was gone. I left the plane behind me and fell into the air.
We are the nothing-to-lose ones,
the try-anything-once ones,
weed seeds inside our cells –
dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –
roots sunk in, for it is the tips
that count, reaching out to tap
new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,
the stomata, those little mouths
opening, closing, sucking in air
in the evening when we boil
wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.
Like cures like, we hear in the morning
when we brush ourselves with
vegetable fiber in the shower,
beat ourselves with our fists.
(This is no crazier than anything else.)
“Three words,” Gaz said. “Motion. Picture. History.” He got up, circled the table as he explained his movie: en route to Earth from a distant solar system, the crew of the Valedictorian crash-lands on a hostile planet inhabited by bat-winged pygmies, lobster-clawed cannibals, two-headed vampires. “That’s where your stuff comes in. I’m going to splice up your movies with mine.” He went on about the mixing-up of genres, chop-suey cinema, bringing together East and West. “We’d be the ambassadors of international film!”
“What’s your thinking on this?” Checkers asked me in Tagalog. “Is this man serious? Is he just an American fool?”
“Ask how much he’ll pay,” I said, “get twenty percent more, give him the movies, and show him to the door.”
ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.
MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.
ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.
MATT
You may.
ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?
MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.
A moment.
MATT
Do you not understand that?
ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
I couldn’t move. The ground was tiny, an aerial map, rich in detail, and the wind tugged at my feet. What were the commands? Arch, I whispered. Arch arch arch. That was all I could remember. I stood up, gripping the side of the opening, my feet balanced on the metal bar beneath the doorway, resisting the steady rush of wind. The jumpmaster shouted again. I felt the pressure of his fingers. And then I was gone. I left the plane behind me and fell into the air.
We are the nothing-to-lose ones,
the try-anything-once ones,
weed seeds inside our cells –
dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –
roots sunk in, for it is the tips
that count, reaching out to tap
new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,
the stomata, those little mouths
opening, closing, sucking in air
in the evening when we boil
wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.
Like cures like, we hear in the morning
when we brush ourselves with
vegetable fiber in the shower,
beat ourselves with our fists.
(This is no crazier than anything else.)
“Three words,” Gaz said. “Motion. Picture. History.” He got up, circled the table as he explained his movie: en route to Earth from a distant solar system, the crew of the Valedictorian crash-lands on a hostile planet inhabited by bat-winged pygmies, lobster-clawed cannibals, two-headed vampires. “That’s where your stuff comes in. I’m going to splice up your movies with mine.” He went on about the mixing-up of genres, chop-suey cinema, bringing together East and West. “We’d be the ambassadors of international film!”
“What’s your thinking on this?” Checkers asked me in Tagalog. “Is this man serious? Is he just an American fool?”
“Ask how much he’ll pay,” I said, “get twenty percent more, give him the movies, and show him to the door.”
ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.
MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.
ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.
MATT
You may.
ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?
MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.
A moment.
MATT
Do you not understand that?
ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.