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.
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
At Bob’s Big Boy, one day in the summer, my mother and I pressed together in the phone booth and emptied her purse out on the metal ledge. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, pencils, leaking pens, scuffed makeup tubes, brushes woven with a fabric of lint and hair, a bra, and finally, my mother’s brown leather address book, with the pages falling out. We wanted to call my father in Las Vegas. It was already over a year since we’d flown there. The number was written, carefully, in brown ink.
We unyoke owl pellets from marrow
in desert meadow. His mouth a pigeon eye,
a torch, a womb turned flower. He, still a boy
dug from cactus skull, undresses into bark
beetles. He unlearns how to hold a gist
with my hand.
I went to visit Grandma and Ralph for a week right after having learned how to whistle. I whistled at all times, with dedication and complete concentration. When I was asked a question I whistled the answer, I whistled along with people as they talked, I whistled the answer while I worked, I whistled while I played. Eventually they made a rule that whistling was forbidden in their house.
DOU YI
My hands were packed in dry ice
Flown across the Pacific and
Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.
My palms open doors to
Rooms my feet haven't walked through and
Caress a woman my eyes will never see.
It doesn't snow there but my
Nails ache when they touch ice and
Scratch strange characters onto that
Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.
His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but
He knows they're words from a
Language his tongue never learned
Justice.
Justice.
Justice
Across the East Sea a yam farmer
Uses my corneas to see.
She dreams of snow but thinks
It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.
On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests
Food that never passed through my lips
Food my teeth didn't chew
Food my tongue hasn't tasted
Food that could have made this spirit stronger
And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.
But my heart--
My heart beats in this town,
Pumping blood through a man
Loved by the son of an official,
A son who moved Heaven and Earth for
His Happiness.
His Future.
His New Harmony.
These offerings have given me strength
I feel my spirit reviving!
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?
Justice.
Justice.
That is my heart. It should beat inside me.
(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)
That night my daddy came in my room and sat the edge of my bed with his back to me, his long-john shirt whitening a space in the dark. He told me that had been no man at all, but a ghost, a Confederate soldier, and I stiffened in my iron bed. Here was thick with ghosts, he told me, and told me not to be afraid, but I was, that the first one I ever saw and me maybe four years old. After he left I cried with the blanket up over my head, listening for those ghost boots slapping up the stairs.
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
At Bob’s Big Boy, one day in the summer, my mother and I pressed together in the phone booth and emptied her purse out on the metal ledge. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, pencils, leaking pens, scuffed makeup tubes, brushes woven with a fabric of lint and hair, a bra, and finally, my mother’s brown leather address book, with the pages falling out. We wanted to call my father in Las Vegas. It was already over a year since we’d flown there. The number was written, carefully, in brown ink.
We unyoke owl pellets from marrow
in desert meadow. His mouth a pigeon eye,
a torch, a womb turned flower. He, still a boy
dug from cactus skull, undresses into bark
beetles. He unlearns how to hold a gist
with my hand.
I went to visit Grandma and Ralph for a week right after having learned how to whistle. I whistled at all times, with dedication and complete concentration. When I was asked a question I whistled the answer, I whistled along with people as they talked, I whistled the answer while I worked, I whistled while I played. Eventually they made a rule that whistling was forbidden in their house.
DOU YI
My hands were packed in dry ice
Flown across the Pacific and
Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.
My palms open doors to
Rooms my feet haven't walked through and
Caress a woman my eyes will never see.
It doesn't snow there but my
Nails ache when they touch ice and
Scratch strange characters onto that
Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.
His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but
He knows they're words from a
Language his tongue never learned
Justice.
Justice.
Justice
Across the East Sea a yam farmer
Uses my corneas to see.
She dreams of snow but thinks
It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.
On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests
Food that never passed through my lips
Food my teeth didn't chew
Food my tongue hasn't tasted
Food that could have made this spirit stronger
And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.
But my heart--
My heart beats in this town,
Pumping blood through a man
Loved by the son of an official,
A son who moved Heaven and Earth for
His Happiness.
His Future.
His New Harmony.
These offerings have given me strength
I feel my spirit reviving!
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi
Justice.
Justice.
Justice.
But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?
Justice.
Justice.
That is my heart. It should beat inside me.
(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)
That night my daddy came in my room and sat the edge of my bed with his back to me, his long-john shirt whitening a space in the dark. He told me that had been no man at all, but a ghost, a Confederate soldier, and I stiffened in my iron bed. Here was thick with ghosts, he told me, and told me not to be afraid, but I was, that the first one I ever saw and me maybe four years old. After he left I cried with the blanket up over my head, listening for those ghost boots slapping up the stairs.