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.

The Silent Partner
Poems

Still half-asleep and often still half-drunk,

They bitch about their wives and trucks and work.

The Skil saws lurch. A hammer hits a thumb

Or bangs a nail over or splits the wood

At a crucial joint, which anyway was out

Of square or measured wrong; then bending down

To pull the thing, his butt peeps out above

His pants. Mostly that’s how things get done.

 

But certain afternoons, with men arrayed

Around the frame, the sun appears to gleam

In sawdust winnowing behind the blade

And catch the hammer cocked above a beam

In a still life of the legendary glamour

Of craft and craftsmanship the mind is given

Long since and far away, where the poised hammer

Doesn’t fall, and not a nail gets driven.

Barbells of the Gods
Poems

Child or woman. Memory or need. Today, again, I can see you

in her eyes, today her eyes again pursue the ground, look

for some sign, some path to follow away from her route.

Her sweatshirt is zipped to the throat and I am realizing that

we are both then, somehow ashamed of what has suddenly happened

between us. And I’m slowing down a little, as if to let

the spring sun catch up to these hands on the steering wheel,

to these hands that will not ever stop needing breasts to

make them hands, as if to uncover my mouth

and yell across the lawns to her.

Force of Gravity
A Novel

The cat was making friends. The previous day when Emmet returned home, he had found four other cats loitering near his building. He worried what would happen if the cats jumped him when he left the house. The cats understood his language, but what passed among their heads was impenetrable to him. He had observed their movements all summer and listened to their sighs and spits and sounds, but he was no closer to infiltrating any part of it as a sign.

Debt
Poems

The Banker trails behind me with his abacus

and crowd of yes-men. I hear

the gold coins rub together in his vest.

 

The stoplights remind me. And the scars

on my ankles and the nails in my mouth.

Once my father pointed his finger at me.

 

Once my mother kissed me on the lips in winter.

I could have been a man like those men

 

on the roof, eyes narrowed at me

like diamond cutters. In surgical gowns

and crucifix tie clips, tight bands of wires

wound beneath their chests –

they remind me of me. All in sync

they cup their ears to the antenna.

 

Quiet. The Jew Levine is coming to collect

with his chisels and his sack of flesh.

Watusi Titanic
Poems

I’ll make you a saint

from an unblemished code book

that must be read

 

in a German restaurant

where beer is served in glasses

wrapped in brown leather

 

when the cuckoo strikes twelve

this will be the moment

of ascension

Cities in Motion
Poems

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.

The Silent Partner
Poems

Still half-asleep and often still half-drunk,

They bitch about their wives and trucks and work.

The Skil saws lurch. A hammer hits a thumb

Or bangs a nail over or splits the wood

At a crucial joint, which anyway was out

Of square or measured wrong; then bending down

To pull the thing, his butt peeps out above

His pants. Mostly that’s how things get done.

 

But certain afternoons, with men arrayed

Around the frame, the sun appears to gleam

In sawdust winnowing behind the blade

And catch the hammer cocked above a beam

In a still life of the legendary glamour

Of craft and craftsmanship the mind is given

Long since and far away, where the poised hammer

Doesn’t fall, and not a nail gets driven.

Barbells of the Gods
Poems

Child or woman. Memory or need. Today, again, I can see you

in her eyes, today her eyes again pursue the ground, look

for some sign, some path to follow away from her route.

Her sweatshirt is zipped to the throat and I am realizing that

we are both then, somehow ashamed of what has suddenly happened

between us. And I’m slowing down a little, as if to let

the spring sun catch up to these hands on the steering wheel,

to these hands that will not ever stop needing breasts to

make them hands, as if to uncover my mouth

and yell across the lawns to her.

Force of Gravity
A Novel

The cat was making friends. The previous day when Emmet returned home, he had found four other cats loitering near his building. He worried what would happen if the cats jumped him when he left the house. The cats understood his language, but what passed among their heads was impenetrable to him. He had observed their movements all summer and listened to their sighs and spits and sounds, but he was no closer to infiltrating any part of it as a sign.

Debt
Poems

The Banker trails behind me with his abacus

and crowd of yes-men. I hear

the gold coins rub together in his vest.

 

The stoplights remind me. And the scars

on my ankles and the nails in my mouth.

Once my father pointed his finger at me.

 

Once my mother kissed me on the lips in winter.

I could have been a man like those men

 

on the roof, eyes narrowed at me

like diamond cutters. In surgical gowns

and crucifix tie clips, tight bands of wires

wound beneath their chests –

they remind me of me. All in sync

they cup their ears to the antenna.

 

Quiet. The Jew Levine is coming to collect

with his chisels and his sack of flesh.

Watusi Titanic
Poems

I’ll make you a saint

from an unblemished code book

that must be read

 

in a German restaurant

where beer is served in glasses

wrapped in brown leather

 

when the cuckoo strikes twelve

this will be the moment

of ascension

Cities in Motion
Poems

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.