Gertrude and Gwendolyn

 

Thank you, Oregon Poetry Association! 

This was my first brush with the Golden Shovel, a poetic form created by Terrance Hayes, who used the words in Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" to end each of his own lines.

To write my poem, I took these words from Gertrude Stein: 

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color...