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.
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.
There was a space across which you and your shadow, pacing,
broke,
and around you pockets of shadow, sucking, shutting.
By now the talk had changed.
There was a liquid of wall and stove and space-behind-the-stove.
And x where the mirror had been.
And x where the window had been.
And x where my hand slid over the tabletop breaking a glass.
There were shadows in the shadows, and in there were cuts.
He tried to swerve around her but, instead, went into a slide. The reds and yellows in the road stretched out. Cottonwood leaves roared in his head. His bowels shuddered. Even before he struck the girl and hurled her into the creek bed, he felt all the familiar habits of the world begin to recede.
BLIND LOUIE: Lissen I’m a be straight up with you, Diane, I need money, as much as you can spare - now – see, I’m puttin’ my shit out heah – ‘cause I’m sick, man, real sick – I gotta go cop – I’m sorry to be like this but I can lie and say I need it for somethin’ else y’know stand here, and try and cop a plea and perpetrate a fraud. I’m not doin’ that, Diane. I’m a junkie.
There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –
a field of starfish, turning slowly
like cogs inside
a water-watch, wound by a sea river;
the star’s five fingers tremble and
reach for a clam’s book of meat,
into which it will inject a sedative
and then its stomach.
In The City, escaped parrots colonize
a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that
In a bag? More hits after this…
People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.
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.
There was a space across which you and your shadow, pacing,
broke,
and around you pockets of shadow, sucking, shutting.
By now the talk had changed.
There was a liquid of wall and stove and space-behind-the-stove.
And x where the mirror had been.
And x where the window had been.
And x where my hand slid over the tabletop breaking a glass.
There were shadows in the shadows, and in there were cuts.
He tried to swerve around her but, instead, went into a slide. The reds and yellows in the road stretched out. Cottonwood leaves roared in his head. His bowels shuddered. Even before he struck the girl and hurled her into the creek bed, he felt all the familiar habits of the world begin to recede.
BLIND LOUIE: Lissen I’m a be straight up with you, Diane, I need money, as much as you can spare - now – see, I’m puttin’ my shit out heah – ‘cause I’m sick, man, real sick – I gotta go cop – I’m sorry to be like this but I can lie and say I need it for somethin’ else y’know stand here, and try and cop a plea and perpetrate a fraud. I’m not doin’ that, Diane. I’m a junkie.
There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –
a field of starfish, turning slowly
like cogs inside
a water-watch, wound by a sea river;
the star’s five fingers tremble and
reach for a clam’s book of meat,
into which it will inject a sedative
and then its stomach.
In The City, escaped parrots colonize
a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that
In a bag? More hits after this…
People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.