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.
Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for
And flew out of the stream
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion
In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun
and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl
when it’s broiled
The Titanic is the one that got away.
Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light. Stupid new technology. And preferring her head whole and her new auburn sew-in weave unsinged, and having no chloroform in the house, she conceded that she would not go out like a poet. But she updated her status, just the same:
A final peace out
before I end it all.
Treat your life like bread,
no edge too small
to butter.
Jilly was not a poet or even an aspiring one. She just liked varying her posts as much as possible.
Copyright © by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. From Heads of the Colored People: Stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Published by 37 Ink/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.
The words she would have said and the sound of the blow she’d gone ready to deliver echoed and died in her head. Words rushed up and died in her throat—panicked words, words to soothe, to tame, to call him back—they rushed on her, but she forgot them halfway to her mouth and he lay so still. And that’s how she learned that Beau Clinton, her only son and the son of Charles Clinton, was dead.
I don't trust nobody
but the land I said
I don't mean
present company
of course
you understand the grasses
hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
command to shhhhh
shhh listen
The words she would have said and the sound of the blow she’d gone ready to deliver echoed and died in her head. Words rushed up and died in her throat—panicked words, words to soothe, to tame, to call him back—they rushed on her, but she forgot them halfway to her mouth and he lay so still. And that’s how she learned that Beau Clinton, her only son and the son of Charles Clinton, was dead.
I do not know how I need the air,
or if it needs me. The lost air,
the air which is smashed, like a red hat.
When the sun rises the amnesty
of the unused animals – the goat, the burrow,
the maroon horses - when the sun rises
the amnesty of these flies its flag: an orchard
with a thumb on top.
Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for
And flew out of the stream
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion
In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun
and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl
when it’s broiled
The Titanic is the one that got away.
Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light. Stupid new technology. And preferring her head whole and her new auburn sew-in weave unsinged, and having no chloroform in the house, she conceded that she would not go out like a poet. But she updated her status, just the same:
A final peace out
before I end it all.
Treat your life like bread,
no edge too small
to butter.
Jilly was not a poet or even an aspiring one. She just liked varying her posts as much as possible.
Copyright © by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. From Heads of the Colored People: Stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Published by 37 Ink/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.
The words she would have said and the sound of the blow she’d gone ready to deliver echoed and died in her head. Words rushed up and died in her throat—panicked words, words to soothe, to tame, to call him back—they rushed on her, but she forgot them halfway to her mouth and he lay so still. And that’s how she learned that Beau Clinton, her only son and the son of Charles Clinton, was dead.
I don't trust nobody
but the land I said
I don't mean
present company
of course
you understand the grasses
hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
command to shhhhh
shhh listen
The words she would have said and the sound of the blow she’d gone ready to deliver echoed and died in her head. Words rushed up and died in her throat—panicked words, words to soothe, to tame, to call him back—they rushed on her, but she forgot them halfway to her mouth and he lay so still. And that’s how she learned that Beau Clinton, her only son and the son of Charles Clinton, was dead.
I do not know how I need the air,
or if it needs me. The lost air,
the air which is smashed, like a red hat.
When the sun rises the amnesty
of the unused animals – the goat, the burrow,
the maroon horses - when the sun rises
the amnesty of these flies its flag: an orchard
with a thumb on top.