Whiting Award Winners

A hole was worn into the snow, and I fit into it, arms and legs drawn up in front of me. The dog snatched and pulled at my mouth, eyes, hair; his breath clouded the air around us, but I did not feel its heat, or smell the blood sinking down between hairs of his muzzle. I watched my mitten come off in his teeth and sail upward, and it seemed unfair then and very sad that one hand should freeze all alone; I lifted the second mitten off and threw it away, then turned my face back again, overtaken suddenly by loneliness. A loud river ran in my ears, dragging me under.

Outside, my grandfather wheeling

a pesticide tank

from tree to tree, spraying everything

with thick, white foam –

bark, leaf, apple flesh –

salting the garden

with handfuls of red sand, dissolving

aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm

as thick as rope. Gone

in an instant, emerging

from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving

an axe, bright blade, pine handle,

to eliminate

a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.

O ordinary axe

And so with the last of my birthday cash

I ordered the Abracadabra Kit.

The ad promised rivals would flee me in terror

and pictured grownups swooning (eyes X’s)

as a boy in tails drove swords through his sister.

I checked the mailbox every day and dreamed

the damage I’d do the Knights, the magic words

I’d speak to blanket them with zits, shrivel

their cocks, cripple their families and pets.

The kit came and of course was crap.

On the way home, going,

with the hill & mammoth clouds

behind me, rushing to the house

before the rain, those beautiful Pakistani girls,

their faces happy as poppies, I thought, those girls

rushing home as I was rushing home

to beat the first small pieces

of rain falling down

like nickels in departing light. There

was the laughing of the beautiful girls,

shrieking gulls, five or six of them (depending

on whether I count myself), the bright

& shining planets of their dresses

lifting, just so, in the wind. & their black hairs.

& the black sound of horses, horses

hoofing it home, the click

& clop of their patent leather hooves—Still, it touches

my ear, this sound. I touch

my heart. I can’t stop touching

my heart & saying, Today is my birthday,

you see? For the beautiful clamor of planets

dressed as girls who, running home, have heads.

Whose heads swing black night, running home

on the black feet of horses, from the rain.

Now I understand. Today is my birthday.

It is Thursday, my day. My black day.

The man asks, Do you have a family? My thinking

brushes the air between us like a wet mark

stains white paper. My mother’s mother, dead

twenty-two years. A stone house. The ants I’ve killed.

Robyne, who, when someone hurls 

toward me a small cruelty, cries. Memphis in August.

My twin brother crunching ice. All the cousins

I’ve made. Walking amongst cedar trees.

Often they seem to be falling forward

but I pretend not to notice

how well they use their bodies:

the girl, that tall delicate boy,

even the father in pink satin –

ardent, flashy. Now something scares me

and I turn away.

                        In the dream

they walk the beach –

my children and their father –

equally exposed, ridiculous suits

in the same ice-cream colors.