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.
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
but we are still at sea we climbed into the rocking
boat again the things that we could not afford
to remember in the vernacular
sun
sinking backwards into the world’s
light industry Eros in idle hands
…one morning at the very end I heard him calling me in the rain. He was on top of our house in boxer shorts, yelling. Our neighbor tried to drive him off the roof by throwing a pot of geraniums at him. My dad started ripping apart the chimney and pitching bricks down on me and everybody else on the front lawn. We had to call the authorities. For a while he thought he was Jesus in a hospital called St. Judas, but it was really St. Jude’s and my dad, of course, wasn’t Jesus.
I stood there perfectly still, just as I had sat for countless medical photographs: full face, turn to the left, the right, now a three-quarter shot to the left. I took a certain pride in knowing the routine so well. I’ve even seen some of these medical photographs in publications. Curiously, those sterile, bright photos are easy for me to look at. For one thing, I know that only doctors look at them, and perhaps I’m even slightly proud that I’m such an interesting case, worthy of documentation. Or maybe I do not really think it is me sitting there, Case 3, figure 6-A.
VANESSA: Have you ever met a black woman…you know…in like, real life that talks like that?
GUS: I’m sure I have.
VANESSA: I see.
GUS: That’s why I think this matters so much. My work is really interrogating my own interiority. But having you present my work, I’m being more true to myself by exposing my inner self through you. Creating a real life version of …the black woman inside me. To be enjoyed by all. I want her voice to be heard. I want to create her with you.
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in The Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph—Racial Tourism! That’s it!
GUS: That’s a new one.
VANESSA: No it’s like…“Let me play double-dutch with the black girls on the playground cause they make me feel all empowered and fierce. They can teach me fun comebacks and how to wag my finger and I can be just as fierce and fabulous as them, but without the burden of actually being a black girl.” I got that right?
GUS: Whoa…You don’t know me.
VANESSA: I don’t.
GUS: I’m not a racist.
VANESSA: This is really awkward for you.
I
What a lucky beast I am,
when he cleans up nice
and nicks his perfect face.
I get to lick that face,
when he lets me.
In the cut’s opening
I get a taste of him
from the inside
out, which is all I have
ever wanted,
to be cell-close
to him. Praise the razor’s
overzealous arm;
the ease
with which it finds tenderness
in this man.
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
but we are still at sea we climbed into the rocking
boat again the things that we could not afford
to remember in the vernacular
sun
sinking backwards into the world’s
light industry Eros in idle hands
…one morning at the very end I heard him calling me in the rain. He was on top of our house in boxer shorts, yelling. Our neighbor tried to drive him off the roof by throwing a pot of geraniums at him. My dad started ripping apart the chimney and pitching bricks down on me and everybody else on the front lawn. We had to call the authorities. For a while he thought he was Jesus in a hospital called St. Judas, but it was really St. Jude’s and my dad, of course, wasn’t Jesus.
I stood there perfectly still, just as I had sat for countless medical photographs: full face, turn to the left, the right, now a three-quarter shot to the left. I took a certain pride in knowing the routine so well. I’ve even seen some of these medical photographs in publications. Curiously, those sterile, bright photos are easy for me to look at. For one thing, I know that only doctors look at them, and perhaps I’m even slightly proud that I’m such an interesting case, worthy of documentation. Or maybe I do not really think it is me sitting there, Case 3, figure 6-A.
VANESSA: Have you ever met a black woman…you know…in like, real life that talks like that?
GUS: I’m sure I have.
VANESSA: I see.
GUS: That’s why I think this matters so much. My work is really interrogating my own interiority. But having you present my work, I’m being more true to myself by exposing my inner self through you. Creating a real life version of …the black woman inside me. To be enjoyed by all. I want her voice to be heard. I want to create her with you.
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in The Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph—Racial Tourism! That’s it!
GUS: That’s a new one.
VANESSA: No it’s like…“Let me play double-dutch with the black girls on the playground cause they make me feel all empowered and fierce. They can teach me fun comebacks and how to wag my finger and I can be just as fierce and fabulous as them, but without the burden of actually being a black girl.” I got that right?
GUS: Whoa…You don’t know me.
VANESSA: I don’t.
GUS: I’m not a racist.
VANESSA: This is really awkward for you.
I
What a lucky beast I am,
when he cleans up nice
and nicks his perfect face.
I get to lick that face,
when he lets me.
In the cut’s opening
I get a taste of him
from the inside
out, which is all I have
ever wanted,
to be cell-close
to him. Praise the razor’s
overzealous arm;
the ease
with which it finds tenderness
in this man.