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.
MERRICK
(resumptive)
So that's why I'm running. To dismantle the institutions that have enslaved us and humiliated us and conned us out of our money for far too long.
WATSON
You're running for election to the government so you can dismantle the government?
MERRICK
(no hesitation, total confidence)
Yes.
WATSON smiles pleasantly.
WATSON
Cool. Good luck.
There are no limits to our verbs, our forms:
think of the knife
that slits an orange or bundled iris stems, the one strapped
to the rooster’s varnished spur. The dagger, poniard, dirk.
Edge that snips the line, whittles an owl, juliennes, traces a lip.
A cut, an incision, a gouge. In Sudan, the story goes, when the slogan
of reform was The Future’s in Your Hands, men scavenged the streets
waving machetes, hacking off hands above the wrist, asking
How will you hold the future now? The stiletto, the skean, the scythe,
The choosing, the mark, the tool. Beneath a concrete bridge,
shirtless & drunk, a boy works his way through the swallows’ nests,
slashing until each mud cone-shape drops into the river, dissolves.
Yet to say so is hardly enough. To say pigsticker’s, bayonet, shiv.
I’m a Bolshevik now as well, I said, drawing myself up proudly. Bolshevism, I continued, drawing on notions I’d mastered just two or three days previous, is an international movement. I raised a mud-stained finger. Along lines of class.
But not along yours, child! said the first woman kindly. I had made the mistake of telling them about my family.
There’d be no place for Karl Peter Voxlauers in their movement, I promise you, the ex-lieutenant put in.
Best thing that he’s dead, then, I suppose, I said. That quieted them awhile.
The hotel staff placed a pitcher of water on each table next to a small stack of translucent cups. I couldn’t help but shake my head at that. We would have been better off, I figured, taking Imam Saleem’s suggestion and just staying put at the Temple. The kitchen sisters would have at least given us some fruit punch and sugar cookies. Hell, had we asked nice enough, they might have made us some fried chicken and potato salad. If we were trying to throw money around like Rockefellers, why not put it in the building fund or pay zakat? But I was a one-man HVAC operation, with little more than a truck, some tools, and a house I was just three mortgage payments away from owning outright. As far as those brothers were concerned, I was too ordinary, based on outward appearances, to be an example.
A military truck speeds through the intersection, children
shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled
through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog
lies panting in the road. Its hind legs
crushed into the shine
of a white Christmas.
On the bedstand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard
for the first time.
He sent this key from Florida.
I think. A key to what?
I tried the car, the trucks,
tried every door – nothing fit.
My wife thought it was his idea
of a joke. I never got his jokes.
Not a word from him, just things:
a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;
a snapshot of himself from Aspen,
arm in arm with somebody, but
both faces had been scissored out.
A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.
Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,
collect, and I knew it was him,
though he always used a different name.
At times enough to make you laugh:
Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,
will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.
MERRICK
(resumptive)
So that's why I'm running. To dismantle the institutions that have enslaved us and humiliated us and conned us out of our money for far too long.
WATSON
You're running for election to the government so you can dismantle the government?
MERRICK
(no hesitation, total confidence)
Yes.
WATSON smiles pleasantly.
WATSON
Cool. Good luck.
There are no limits to our verbs, our forms:
think of the knife
that slits an orange or bundled iris stems, the one strapped
to the rooster’s varnished spur. The dagger, poniard, dirk.
Edge that snips the line, whittles an owl, juliennes, traces a lip.
A cut, an incision, a gouge. In Sudan, the story goes, when the slogan
of reform was The Future’s in Your Hands, men scavenged the streets
waving machetes, hacking off hands above the wrist, asking
How will you hold the future now? The stiletto, the skean, the scythe,
The choosing, the mark, the tool. Beneath a concrete bridge,
shirtless & drunk, a boy works his way through the swallows’ nests,
slashing until each mud cone-shape drops into the river, dissolves.
Yet to say so is hardly enough. To say pigsticker’s, bayonet, shiv.
I’m a Bolshevik now as well, I said, drawing myself up proudly. Bolshevism, I continued, drawing on notions I’d mastered just two or three days previous, is an international movement. I raised a mud-stained finger. Along lines of class.
But not along yours, child! said the first woman kindly. I had made the mistake of telling them about my family.
There’d be no place for Karl Peter Voxlauers in their movement, I promise you, the ex-lieutenant put in.
Best thing that he’s dead, then, I suppose, I said. That quieted them awhile.
The hotel staff placed a pitcher of water on each table next to a small stack of translucent cups. I couldn’t help but shake my head at that. We would have been better off, I figured, taking Imam Saleem’s suggestion and just staying put at the Temple. The kitchen sisters would have at least given us some fruit punch and sugar cookies. Hell, had we asked nice enough, they might have made us some fried chicken and potato salad. If we were trying to throw money around like Rockefellers, why not put it in the building fund or pay zakat? But I was a one-man HVAC operation, with little more than a truck, some tools, and a house I was just three mortgage payments away from owning outright. As far as those brothers were concerned, I was too ordinary, based on outward appearances, to be an example.
A military truck speeds through the intersection, children
shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled
through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog
lies panting in the road. Its hind legs
crushed into the shine
of a white Christmas.
On the bedstand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard
for the first time.
He sent this key from Florida.
I think. A key to what?
I tried the car, the trucks,
tried every door – nothing fit.
My wife thought it was his idea
of a joke. I never got his jokes.
Not a word from him, just things:
a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;
a snapshot of himself from Aspen,
arm in arm with somebody, but
both faces had been scissored out.
A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.
Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,
collect, and I knew it was him,
though he always used a different name.
At times enough to make you laugh:
Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,
will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.