Whiting Award Winners

Child or woman. Memory or need. Today, again, I can see you

in her eyes, today her eyes again pursue the ground, look

for some sign, some path to follow away from her route.

Her sweatshirt is zipped to the throat and I am realizing that

we are both then, somehow ashamed of what has suddenly happened

between us. And I’m slowing down a little, as if to let

the spring sun catch up to these hands on the steering wheel,

to these hands that will not ever stop needing breasts to

make them hands, as if to uncover my mouth

and yell across the lawns to her.

Mamá, you left me.   Papá, you left me.

Abuelos, I left you.   Tías, I left you.

Cousins, I’m here.   Cousins, I left you.

Tías, welcome.   Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.

Mamá, let’s return.   Papá ¿por qué?

Mamá, marry for papers.   Papá, marry for papers.

Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.

I won’t marry for papers.   I might marry for papers.

I won’t be back soon.   I can’t vote anywhere,

I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.

REGGIE
Now see you gonna laugh. Cause you thank everythang I do is funny. It ain’t funny. It’s meant tah teach ya. How I speak? That’s meant tah teach you too. You get older ‘n leave this place...one thing ya gonna remember is the music of ya daddy’s voice. The memory ‘a what made ya. How ya people survived. An’ these little games we play? These little hand games? That’s your history too… ‘cause ya grandmama sat ya mama down when she was smaller ‘n you ‘n they played these games ‘n had the best time that ever was. Then, ya mama taught me ya know that? Shoot, I ain’t wanna learn no little girl games. Imma man! (Laughs.) What I look like playin’ some little girl hand game! But, then we had you. And I taught you. That’s a road map. You ever get lost, you find ya way back home (points to his chest) from them. Understand? And one way or another... I’ll come get you.

Since we began to live in Desolation years ago, friends have said that if it were not for their children, professions, political activism, mortgages, debts to spouses of ex-choice, and bad knees, they would gladly do what we do. “We uphold the culture of our generation,” they tell us. “You and Mark live its dream side.” Their envy does not detect the physical costs of professional vagrancy. Far from armchairs, ceilings, sock drawers, and a street address, but within sight of the downslide toward retirement, we are out here dragging heavy rafts and sleeping on the ground, underpants full of sand. When others travel with us on a ranger patrol, at the end of the trip Mark always asks the rhetorical “Would you like to have my job?” “It has been really nice,” they answer, sprinting up the boat ramp to their Land Cruisers. 

His music swims in the room’s colors,

Not making the décor any prettier,

In its war of blood and tar;

His bleak tone blare into blackness

Of hard luck and lights.

Easier to sit in the front row

With your feet propped on stage

Than to play in a room where

Notes are harder to hold than a cheating lover.

As everyone heckles advice,

Somebody tells a fable about

Dignity and the failed attempt.

A military truck speeds through the intersection, children

                                     shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled

          through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog

                     lies panting in the road. Its hind legs

                                                                         crushed into the shine

                                            of a white Christmas.

On the bedstand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard

                                                                   for the first time.