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.
HOME IS WHERE
I peek from the slit
between my forearms.
Them. They come.
Eyes in all the heads glow.
The flow
melts my arm flesh
Burgundy vessels drip
from bone.
The graveyard this time of year is nice. Damp orange yellow red leaves pile at the headstones for pillows. Place my head in leaves. Soil moist and black like chocolate cake and taste like worms. Arms spread legs spread wind crawls up my pants leg to pocket soft backs of knees. Slightly arched back anchors shoulders to my throat, jaw, head. Eyes fixed to the blue grey. Meanwhile. An old deer limps over, sits like a dog, licks my shoes.
The ensuing inquiries found the girl to be a teenager, though she weighed only fifty-nine pounds and was only fifty-four inches tall. She was in much worse physical shape than at first suspected: she was incontinent, could not chew solid food and could hardly swallow, could not focus her eyes beyond twelve feet, and, according to some accounts, could not cry. She salivated constantly, spat indiscriminately. She had a ring of hard callus around her buttocks, and she had two nearly complete sets of teeth. Her hair was thin. She could not hop, skip, climb, or do anything requiring the full extension of her limbs. She showed no perception of hot or cold.
I think it was near one o’clock in the morning. Retching blood, Botho jerked his head back and forth, then lurched forward as though loosing his earthly form. This was followed by a sharp intake of breath, as though he was trying to suck it back in again. The bullet had lodged near his shoulder; it had not damaged his throat, and he could still utter, “I’ll pay the devil my soul twice over to watch you hang.” That sentence seemed to take an eternity to work its way through. I all but felt his grimace clamp down on my heart; blood bubbled along his lips.
I love American newspapers, the way each section
is folded independently and believes it owns
the world. There’s this brief item in the inter-
national pages: the Chinese government has posted
signs in Tiananmen Square; forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say
the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces
unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although
no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter
busting inside them. I go back to the sports section
and a closeup of a rookie in mind-swing, his face
keeping all the wrong emotions in check.
My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”
At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.
HOME IS WHERE
I peek from the slit
between my forearms.
Them. They come.
Eyes in all the heads glow.
The flow
melts my arm flesh
Burgundy vessels drip
from bone.
The graveyard this time of year is nice. Damp orange yellow red leaves pile at the headstones for pillows. Place my head in leaves. Soil moist and black like chocolate cake and taste like worms. Arms spread legs spread wind crawls up my pants leg to pocket soft backs of knees. Slightly arched back anchors shoulders to my throat, jaw, head. Eyes fixed to the blue grey. Meanwhile. An old deer limps over, sits like a dog, licks my shoes.
The ensuing inquiries found the girl to be a teenager, though she weighed only fifty-nine pounds and was only fifty-four inches tall. She was in much worse physical shape than at first suspected: she was incontinent, could not chew solid food and could hardly swallow, could not focus her eyes beyond twelve feet, and, according to some accounts, could not cry. She salivated constantly, spat indiscriminately. She had a ring of hard callus around her buttocks, and she had two nearly complete sets of teeth. Her hair was thin. She could not hop, skip, climb, or do anything requiring the full extension of her limbs. She showed no perception of hot or cold.
I think it was near one o’clock in the morning. Retching blood, Botho jerked his head back and forth, then lurched forward as though loosing his earthly form. This was followed by a sharp intake of breath, as though he was trying to suck it back in again. The bullet had lodged near his shoulder; it had not damaged his throat, and he could still utter, “I’ll pay the devil my soul twice over to watch you hang.” That sentence seemed to take an eternity to work its way through. I all but felt his grimace clamp down on my heart; blood bubbled along his lips.
I love American newspapers, the way each section
is folded independently and believes it owns
the world. There’s this brief item in the inter-
national pages: the Chinese government has posted
signs in Tiananmen Square; forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say
the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces
unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although
no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter
busting inside them. I go back to the sports section
and a closeup of a rookie in mind-swing, his face
keeping all the wrong emotions in check.
My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”
At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.