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.

Orient Point
Poems

Coyotes invade. They claim to be the truth.

Black bears nose the bougainvillea, moving

eastward, indiscriminate, original.

Our sinks back up, our toilets will not drain,

our nature disobediently tends toward nature.

The New Yorker (June 16 and 23, 2003)

The last visitor left.

You closed the door and smiled at me.

I watched you cross Room 515 through

the flowers in vases, and your face

looked just like your face, smiling

down at me in my stupid green issue gown.

I felt myself want you

through the plastic tubes, 

the vines around, across and above me.

I felt myself want you

exclusively. Even pain faded

into the scenery as you leaned in

to kiss me. And I met your kiss

with my lips and we were both

folded into it,

into that clean clean folding,

that soft longed-for kiss

across the side rails. That particular kiss

in its delicious oblivion hoisted us

above the suffering body.

We felt that long transfer of soft

for softness, that kiss lifting us

above the basement drawers

where we would finally face up.

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
A Novel

For as long as we could remember we had been together in the house which established the center of the known world. When we were younger we woke in the mornings while it was still dark. Grandad would be clumping out of his back room and down the hall to the bathroom, phantom-like in his long underwear. He wore it because he was a farmer, which was why he got up before first light to do the chores. In the two iron beds in the attic room there were the four of us—Celia and Jenny, who were sisters, Anne and Katie, sisters too, like our mothers, who were sisters. Sometimes we watched each other, knew differences. But most of the time it was as though the four of us were one and we lived in days that gathered into one stream of time, undifferentiated and communal.

Combing the Snakes from His Hair
Poems

Bristling outward

his sadism roots him deepest.

Some will hurt whomever they choose.

 

God-headed and radiant

            but shimmering little to offer.

Don’t build your bed of crisis

            or lie on the down of his ire.

Slow Lightning
Poems

I draw the curtains.     The room darkens, but

the mirror still reflects          a crescent moon.

I pull        the crescent out,          a rigid curve

that softens                    into a length of cloth.

I wrap the cloth around                     my eyes,

and I’m peering    through a crack in the wall

revealing                        a landscape of snow.

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

Orient Point
Poems

Coyotes invade. They claim to be the truth.

Black bears nose the bougainvillea, moving

eastward, indiscriminate, original.

Our sinks back up, our toilets will not drain,

our nature disobediently tends toward nature.

The New Yorker (June 16 and 23, 2003)

The last visitor left.

You closed the door and smiled at me.

I watched you cross Room 515 through

the flowers in vases, and your face

looked just like your face, smiling

down at me in my stupid green issue gown.

I felt myself want you

through the plastic tubes, 

the vines around, across and above me.

I felt myself want you

exclusively. Even pain faded

into the scenery as you leaned in

to kiss me. And I met your kiss

with my lips and we were both

folded into it,

into that clean clean folding,

that soft longed-for kiss

across the side rails. That particular kiss

in its delicious oblivion hoisted us

above the suffering body.

We felt that long transfer of soft

for softness, that kiss lifting us

above the basement drawers

where we would finally face up.

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
A Novel

For as long as we could remember we had been together in the house which established the center of the known world. When we were younger we woke in the mornings while it was still dark. Grandad would be clumping out of his back room and down the hall to the bathroom, phantom-like in his long underwear. He wore it because he was a farmer, which was why he got up before first light to do the chores. In the two iron beds in the attic room there were the four of us—Celia and Jenny, who were sisters, Anne and Katie, sisters too, like our mothers, who were sisters. Sometimes we watched each other, knew differences. But most of the time it was as though the four of us were one and we lived in days that gathered into one stream of time, undifferentiated and communal.

Combing the Snakes from His Hair
Poems

Bristling outward

his sadism roots him deepest.

Some will hurt whomever they choose.

 

God-headed and radiant

            but shimmering little to offer.

Don’t build your bed of crisis

            or lie on the down of his ire.

Slow Lightning
Poems

I draw the curtains.     The room darkens, but

the mirror still reflects          a crescent moon.

I pull        the crescent out,          a rigid curve

that softens                    into a length of cloth.

I wrap the cloth around                     my eyes,

and I’m peering    through a crack in the wall

revealing                        a landscape of snow.

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