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 paused outside Porter Square Station, in my wet clothes, to observe what a sign there called a kinetic sculpture—three elevated red objects shaped like tongues, tumbling about their axes and orbiting a tall white pole. My thoughts circled back to Theta’s shocked expression at my rent, which led me to review my predicted costs—food, transportation, utilities—and wonder if I’d overlooked something. After a brief trance, I descended a long escalator to the commuter rail platform and boarded the train to Wilton. Soon I was passing the same backyards and open spaces I’d sped by in March, no longer barren and covered with dirty snow, but green, with that profusion of young spring leaves I associated with Impressionist paintings. A pond slid into view, its edges blurred by clumps of reeds. The rain started again. It drew long diagonal streaks across the windows. Anyone want to get off at Brandeis? the conductor called as she strode up the aisle. That was a question, she added cheerfully. Not a threat.
By the end of the day, Ji-ho had moved things around, managing, even, to reposition an oak dresser by himself, whereas our mother and I, for all the years we would occupy the middle room, would never take down my cousin’s Star Wars poster, his Carnegie Mellon pennant. Every now and then, she and I would start up the same old argument about who slept on the floor and who slept on the twin bed. Each of us trying to urge comfort on the other. Neither of us knowing how to commit an act of selfishness.
“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm.
“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.”
“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply.
Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.
Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says.
We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.”
Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
“Go down,” she says.
When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.”
I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.
And we divorced in the survives and O
It was a comedy and first you ever slept with me
And marry me and marry me and O
How fat I used to be
He climbed over the fence surrounding the Queen’s Pond, took off his clothes, and dived in, not caring whether a police squad would approach. The chill of water invigorated him as he waded through the lilies floating on top. He wondered how long it would take, if he allowed himself to sink, for the water to fill his lungs. He thought of monsters with long tentacles that supposedly lived at the bottom, and he imagined them tearing into his flesh. Would his wife be able to recognize the body?
Who can give an account of occasions
Can mechanized description so falter
Can move toward gesture to scissor the outline
Each to enable a series of seconds breaking or burning
Can undo the work of a million years of human love
if I curse you just right
I paused outside Porter Square Station, in my wet clothes, to observe what a sign there called a kinetic sculpture—three elevated red objects shaped like tongues, tumbling about their axes and orbiting a tall white pole. My thoughts circled back to Theta’s shocked expression at my rent, which led me to review my predicted costs—food, transportation, utilities—and wonder if I’d overlooked something. After a brief trance, I descended a long escalator to the commuter rail platform and boarded the train to Wilton. Soon I was passing the same backyards and open spaces I’d sped by in March, no longer barren and covered with dirty snow, but green, with that profusion of young spring leaves I associated with Impressionist paintings. A pond slid into view, its edges blurred by clumps of reeds. The rain started again. It drew long diagonal streaks across the windows. Anyone want to get off at Brandeis? the conductor called as she strode up the aisle. That was a question, she added cheerfully. Not a threat.
By the end of the day, Ji-ho had moved things around, managing, even, to reposition an oak dresser by himself, whereas our mother and I, for all the years we would occupy the middle room, would never take down my cousin’s Star Wars poster, his Carnegie Mellon pennant. Every now and then, she and I would start up the same old argument about who slept on the floor and who slept on the twin bed. Each of us trying to urge comfort on the other. Neither of us knowing how to commit an act of selfishness.
“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm.
“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.”
“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply.
Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.
Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says.
We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.”
Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
“Go down,” she says.
When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.”
I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.
And we divorced in the survives and O
It was a comedy and first you ever slept with me
And marry me and marry me and O
How fat I used to be
He climbed over the fence surrounding the Queen’s Pond, took off his clothes, and dived in, not caring whether a police squad would approach. The chill of water invigorated him as he waded through the lilies floating on top. He wondered how long it would take, if he allowed himself to sink, for the water to fill his lungs. He thought of monsters with long tentacles that supposedly lived at the bottom, and he imagined them tearing into his flesh. Would his wife be able to recognize the body?
Who can give an account of occasions
Can mechanized description so falter
Can move toward gesture to scissor the outline
Each to enable a series of seconds breaking or burning
Can undo the work of a million years of human love
if I curse you just right