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.
Things weather fast here, soon bird will be bone,
brittle and white, dead twig snapped underfoot
where the sky alters in seconds, shine to shower,
and harsher truths hit home hour after hour –
the sundew snagging flies, settling to eat,
a fat gull’s fractured keen that cuts through stone.
…what of the glowing spine,
what of the toy stings of stock footage flames,
what of the jets you swatted dead
from the air with unmistakable joy,
you of the plastic-leather, pebbled Pleistocene flesh,
you of the palsied fury, you
of the put-upon by dissemblers and disturbers,
you, what of the life burned
so cheaply into celluloid we are charmed…
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
The car veered, a tree loomed, and we were garlanded in glass, and a branch insinuated itself into Mini’s ribs and encircled her heart, and Ronnie sprang forth and broke against the tree, and in the backseat Caroline was marveling at how her brain became unmoored and seesawed forward into the jagged coastline of the front of her skull and back again, until she was no longer herself, and it was all so mortifying that we could have just died, and we did, we did die, we watched every second of it happen until we realized that we were back on the road, driving, and all of the preceding was just a little movie that Mom had played inside of our heads.
Our culture is based in the profundity things carry. We’re always trying to see the world the way our ancestors did—we feel less of a relationship to the natural world. There was a time when we dictated our beliefs and told ourselves what was real, or what was wrong or right. There weren’t any abstractions. We knew that our language came before the world.
Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.
Damn.
Things weather fast here, soon bird will be bone,
brittle and white, dead twig snapped underfoot
where the sky alters in seconds, shine to shower,
and harsher truths hit home hour after hour –
the sundew snagging flies, settling to eat,
a fat gull’s fractured keen that cuts through stone.
…what of the glowing spine,
what of the toy stings of stock footage flames,
what of the jets you swatted dead
from the air with unmistakable joy,
you of the plastic-leather, pebbled Pleistocene flesh,
you of the palsied fury, you
of the put-upon by dissemblers and disturbers,
you, what of the life burned
so cheaply into celluloid we are charmed…
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
The car veered, a tree loomed, and we were garlanded in glass, and a branch insinuated itself into Mini’s ribs and encircled her heart, and Ronnie sprang forth and broke against the tree, and in the backseat Caroline was marveling at how her brain became unmoored and seesawed forward into the jagged coastline of the front of her skull and back again, until she was no longer herself, and it was all so mortifying that we could have just died, and we did, we did die, we watched every second of it happen until we realized that we were back on the road, driving, and all of the preceding was just a little movie that Mom had played inside of our heads.
Our culture is based in the profundity things carry. We’re always trying to see the world the way our ancestors did—we feel less of a relationship to the natural world. There was a time when we dictated our beliefs and told ourselves what was real, or what was wrong or right. There weren’t any abstractions. We knew that our language came before the world.
Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.
Damn.