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.
Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.
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.
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!
IV. On Graduate School
Grass for acres and trees tall,
Then, everywhere there should be
Some harvest to guard, sprouts
A building in which I am mistaken
For a broom, handled as such,
And given to the floor. To dust.
I am here to learn: that which fears me
Must be crow
In this hall of heavy doors
Where my body is a blemish.
He could be cruel. I once saw him blow pepper in the cat’s face. He loathed that cat, a surly, untrainable tom found in the street. But he was fond of another creature we took in, an orphaned nestling sparrow. Against expectations, the bird survived and learned to fly. But, afraid that it would not know how to fend for itself outdoors, we decided to keep it. My father sometimes sat by its cage, watching the bird and cooing to it in Chinese. My mother was amused. “You see: He has more to say to that bird than to us!” The emperor and his nightingale, she called them. “The Chinese have always loved their birds.” (What none of us knew: At that very moment in China keeping pet birds had been prohibited as a bourgeois affectation, and sparrows were being exterminated as pests.)
Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.
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.
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!
IV. On Graduate School
Grass for acres and trees tall,
Then, everywhere there should be
Some harvest to guard, sprouts
A building in which I am mistaken
For a broom, handled as such,
And given to the floor. To dust.
I am here to learn: that which fears me
Must be crow
In this hall of heavy doors
Where my body is a blemish.
He could be cruel. I once saw him blow pepper in the cat’s face. He loathed that cat, a surly, untrainable tom found in the street. But he was fond of another creature we took in, an orphaned nestling sparrow. Against expectations, the bird survived and learned to fly. But, afraid that it would not know how to fend for itself outdoors, we decided to keep it. My father sometimes sat by its cage, watching the bird and cooing to it in Chinese. My mother was amused. “You see: He has more to say to that bird than to us!” The emperor and his nightingale, she called them. “The Chinese have always loved their birds.” (What none of us knew: At that very moment in China keeping pet birds had been prohibited as a bourgeois affectation, and sparrows were being exterminated as pests.)