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.
By the time he was infamous enough to sell out bullfighting arenas, the Caruso C was a sort of burlesque number. He would inch to it from the frequencies below, nearly embrace the note, and then flat a bit before trumpeting, C! with full tenor fury. Toscanini chided him for grandstanding, but this in-and-out tease worked well with German and Latin American houses, which particularly enjoyed the punishment of a loud flirtation.
“You see my grandson over there.” Justin’s father humps his chin in Graham’s direction without taking his eyes off Seth. “You don’t want him to see what the inside of your skull looks like, do you?”
“You’d never do that,” Seth says. “I could walk right up to that rifle and stick my finger in it and you’d never do a thing.”
“Come on and try.”
“You’re so full of it.”
Then his father swings the barrel left and fires. The crack of the gunshot is followed by the chime of glass shattering, falling from the red pickup, its left headlight destroyed.
For a moment Seth stares at his truck. “You’ll fucking pay for that,” he says.
We don’t have the remotest idea of what we might find or do there, but America—Canada in our minds is automatically subsumed under that category—has for us the old fabulous associations: streets paved with gold, the goose that laid the golden egg. There is also that book about Canada from the war. And, my father reminds my mother, whose impulses really draw her toward Israel, in Canada there is no war, and there never will be. Canada is the land of peace. In Israel, there’s a constant danger of war, and they take even girls into the army. Does she want her daughters to end up on a battlefield? Does she herself want to go through a war again?
The last time I cried to your picture
was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.
It was about her and you and how
all the things I could touch would disappear,
like your hand or dirty boxers on the floor,
or the liver spots on her arms, the space
of her missing tooth.
I’ve been having that dream again.
The one where I make a fortune selling my used underwear
and I buy her a tombstone.
Was I sad to leave the country? Is that where I was born? Am I my grandmother’s child? Am I a child of potion? Am I a child of folklore, or family crisis, some need for gender balancing? Maybe some need to keep my father? And who is my father too, is he Buddy my daddy, or is he some country man whose lasting seed my Grandma’am could pickle till it got to Detroit? Maybe a man prone to girls, maybe Mr. Howell Jones or Mr. Harold Grayson Senior or maybe his brother who looks nothing like him. Are my brothers really brothers to me, or am I sister to bay leaf and scorched root of cayenne?
Notes from Kabul
on being fine when others aren’t;
notice graphic, how quotes
wax truth & assassinate
anecdotes
the surplus of survival
guilt covers pages & the data
at the price of two
boiled eggs
rectangular streets grind us
like watercolor powder
we wash blood off bags
& hats & the few
branches of tree
are in blaze yet we
still play stone scissor
paper
By the time he was infamous enough to sell out bullfighting arenas, the Caruso C was a sort of burlesque number. He would inch to it from the frequencies below, nearly embrace the note, and then flat a bit before trumpeting, C! with full tenor fury. Toscanini chided him for grandstanding, but this in-and-out tease worked well with German and Latin American houses, which particularly enjoyed the punishment of a loud flirtation.
“You see my grandson over there.” Justin’s father humps his chin in Graham’s direction without taking his eyes off Seth. “You don’t want him to see what the inside of your skull looks like, do you?”
“You’d never do that,” Seth says. “I could walk right up to that rifle and stick my finger in it and you’d never do a thing.”
“Come on and try.”
“You’re so full of it.”
Then his father swings the barrel left and fires. The crack of the gunshot is followed by the chime of glass shattering, falling from the red pickup, its left headlight destroyed.
For a moment Seth stares at his truck. “You’ll fucking pay for that,” he says.
We don’t have the remotest idea of what we might find or do there, but America—Canada in our minds is automatically subsumed under that category—has for us the old fabulous associations: streets paved with gold, the goose that laid the golden egg. There is also that book about Canada from the war. And, my father reminds my mother, whose impulses really draw her toward Israel, in Canada there is no war, and there never will be. Canada is the land of peace. In Israel, there’s a constant danger of war, and they take even girls into the army. Does she want her daughters to end up on a battlefield? Does she herself want to go through a war again?
The last time I cried to your picture
was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.
It was about her and you and how
all the things I could touch would disappear,
like your hand or dirty boxers on the floor,
or the liver spots on her arms, the space
of her missing tooth.
I’ve been having that dream again.
The one where I make a fortune selling my used underwear
and I buy her a tombstone.
Was I sad to leave the country? Is that where I was born? Am I my grandmother’s child? Am I a child of potion? Am I a child of folklore, or family crisis, some need for gender balancing? Maybe some need to keep my father? And who is my father too, is he Buddy my daddy, or is he some country man whose lasting seed my Grandma’am could pickle till it got to Detroit? Maybe a man prone to girls, maybe Mr. Howell Jones or Mr. Harold Grayson Senior or maybe his brother who looks nothing like him. Are my brothers really brothers to me, or am I sister to bay leaf and scorched root of cayenne?
Notes from Kabul
on being fine when others aren’t;
notice graphic, how quotes
wax truth & assassinate
anecdotes
the surplus of survival
guilt covers pages & the data
at the price of two
boiled eggs
rectangular streets grind us
like watercolor powder
we wash blood off bags
& hats & the few
branches of tree
are in blaze yet we
still play stone scissor
paper