The golden shovel anthology: new poems honoring Gwendolyn Brooks

Foreword / by Terrance Hayes -- The golden shovel / Terrance Hayes -- Selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. A sunset of the city -- Kitchenette building -- Boy breaking glass -- A song in the front yard -- The bean eaters -- The Anniad. After / Aracelis Girmay -- What there is to spend / Hailey Leithauser -- Appendix to the Anniad. Next time honey / Paul Martinez-Pompa -- A halo for her invisible hair / Rachel Richardson -- The artists' and models' ball. Weather report / Anne Shaw -- An aspect of love, alive in the ice and fire. First summer song / Pattiann Rogers -- An aspect of love / Renée Watson -- Ballad of Pearl May Lee. Stay, dear / Susan Wheeler -- The Ballad of Rudolph Reed. Conjunction / Andrew Motion -- The bean eaters. Resurrection / Bonnie Jo Campbell -- The parrot man / Caitlin Doyle -- The fava bean-eaters / Sandra M. Gilbert -- At the evening of life / Nikki Giovanni -- Evening / Diane Glancy -- Roadside diner : Fairfield, Maine / Jack Powers -- Next to the flatware / Christian Robinson -- New Year's Eve in Times Square / Philip Schultz -- Beverly Hills, Chicago. Golden shovel Buddha / Didi Jackson -- Stand your ground / Major Jackson -- September, Chicago / Angela Narciso Torres -- The birth in a narrow room. Child tipping forever / Jenny Boully -- The Blackstone Rangers. What is betrayal but a construct? / Judy Blundell -- The ache / Chelsea Dixon -- A love Jones in a booming economy / Randall Horton -- 1972 Ford LTD / Quraysh Ali Lansana -- Funeral sign / Mike Puican -- After the eulogy / Kelly Reuter -- Cure and Curry / Natalie Richardson -- i. Cecil Park-high as the swings ; ii. Dutch pot dancing / Debris Stevenson -- Boy breaking glass. Imagine this / Meena Alexander -- Boys breaking glass / Catherine Brogan -- Asked why I always have to be so negative I / Hannah Gamble -- Ornithology / M. Ayodele Heath -- Behind in the count / Pam Houston -- Sleeping under stars / Troy Jollimore -- The second going / Philip Levine -- Meadowlands / Erika Meitner -- Opening ceremonies, 2012 / Michael Meyerhofer -- When he doesn't come home / Deb Nystrom -- Boy breaking glass, Peckham / Clare Pollard -- Vagrant / Emmett, Jim, and Karen Shepard -- That boy is still breaking glass / David Wagoner -- So there / John Corey Whaley -- A Bronzeville mother loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, a Mississippi mother burns bacon. Tallahatchie / Terry Blackhawk -- Grown Up / Kwame Dawes -- Yazoo City / Raven Hogue -- Bronzeville woman in a red Hat. Anasema kwa haraka / LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs -- The maid / Eugene Gloria -- At the Capitol Hill Suites, 1985 / Maxine Kumin -- In a Red Hat / Stephanie Strickland -- The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock. Bleeding brownish boy / Sharon Draper -- Meanwhile in the henhouse / Rita Williams-Garcia -- In Little Rock / Jake Adam York -- The Chicago Picasso. The seahorse / Maura Stanton -- Ars poetica composed while dressing in the dark / Kevin Stein -- Tender visits / Liane Strauss -- The children of the poor. The climb / Siobhan Campbell -- What will we give our children? / Brenda Cardenas -- Sustenance / Kyle Dargan -- A neighborhood in Chicago / Reginald Gibbons -- Play the song / Laurie Ann Guerrero -- Eve wept / Jancie N. Harrington -- If divorce were our concerto / Ruth Ellen Kocher -- At the lake's shore, I sit with the sister, resting / Sasha Pimentel -- The inconditions of love / Shazea Quraishi -- On a station of the L / Don Share -- "Cry, baby" Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters sang & "They sky is crying" / Bruce Smith -- Women of the poor / Stephanie Sutton -- Salve ship captain's great-great granddaughter / Spring Ulmer -- Lost softness softly makes a trap for us / Ronald Wallace -- The Coora flower. Stay / Jericho Brown -- Exhaust the little moment, Soon it dies. Two collisions / Karen Volkman -- The explorer. The explorer / Adrian Matejka -- First fight, Then fiddle. First fight, Then fiddle / Lisa Williams -- Garbageman : the man with the orderly mind. Instructions : say it like it is / Franny Choi -- Blue graffiti / Oliver de la Paz -- Recycling / Denise Duhamel -- The occasioned contrition of a cynic / David Guterson -- Is light enough? / Lloyd Schwartz -- Truth and the garbageman / Graeme Simsion -- Is light enough? / Matthew Zapruder --

Gay chaps at the bar. Non-commissioned (a quartet) / Sandra Beasley -- Stillborn (in memory of) / CM Burroughs -- Amen / Laura Mullen -- Stand your ground / Christina Pugh -- The 17 year-old & the gay bar / Danez Smith -- Omen / Lewis Turco -- Jessie Mitchell's mother. Jessie Mitchell's father / Jaswinder Bolina -- Greatgrandfather's woods / Miriam Nash -- Split personality / Ugochi Nwaogwugwu -- Kitchenette building. Feather and bone / Gregory Djanikian -- Gray / Peter Kahn -- On my eyelashes / José Oliveraz -- Dry hours / Alicia Ostriker -- Close memory / Maya Pindyck -- We pray, and / Barbara Jane Reyes -- Who has given us life / Sasha Rogelberg -- We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan / George Szirtes -- Even if we were willing / Robert Wrigley -- The Last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till. After the burial : a stanza / Christian Campbell -- Len Bias, a bouquet of flowers, and Ms. Brooks / Michael Collier -- Money, Mississippi 1955 / Myra Sklarew -- Black, poured directly into the wound / Patricia Smith -- The life of Lincoln West. Variation, the birth of Lincoln West / Honor Moore -- A light and diplomatic bird. Birdie / Fikayo Balogun -- Humbug epithalamium / Traci Brimhall -- I do not want to be / Stephen Dunn -- 1982 / Leontia Flynn -- Storm / Nikki Grimes -- A final and unrepentant, silent, sorry bird / Dorothea Lasky -- The little-known bird of the inner eye / Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet -- Bird boy / Terese Svoboda -- Sanctuary / Tana Jean Welch -- Solitaire / Jane Yolen -- A lovely love. Of marriage : river, lake and vein / Nicole Cooley -- House with an X on the door / Rebecca Hazelton -- Throwing stones at the all white pool / Colleen McElroy -- The lovers of the poor. A legacy / Nathaniel Bellows -- Cartoon / Alison Hawthorne Deming -- The empathy nest / Nathan Hoks -- Logistics for Thursday / Amy Lemmon -- Black Friday / Rachel McKibbens -- The wedding planners / Gregory Pardlo -- The left-hour / Leah Umansky -- A man of the middle class. Division Street / Elise Paschen -- Semi-splendid / Tracy K. Smith -- Mentors. Golden nosegay / Sharon Olds -- Sentence / Baron Wormser -- The mother. My mother speaks to her daughter, not yet born / Jehanne Dubrow -- Daughter-mother / Rachel Contreni Flynn -- We were gonna go through with it, and then we lost it / Adam M. Levin -- Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate / Gail Mazur -- Childless woman / Patricia McCarthy -- The ghost song / Paula Meehan -- Missing Miss Brooks / Sharon Olds -- From the hospital / Kevin Prufer -- Even-keeled and at-eased / Alberto Ríos -- My own dead / Joshua Marie Wilkinson -- The single neighbor threatens my family / Richard Zabransky -- My dreams, my works, must wait till after hell. Body of a woman, tail of a fish / Ama Codjoe -- I remember those long nights when I / Billy Collins -- Her mouth, his eyes / Andrea Hollander -- After hell / Patricia Spears Jones -- ASEA / Joyelle McSweeney -- The best thing to do / Willie Perdomo -- So I wait / Richard Powers -- Send me home / Bob Shacochis -- Key to the Dollar Store / Al Young -- My own sweet good. From the sidelines / Rita Dove -- The near-Johannesburg boy. Johannesburg 2013 / Jackie Wills -- Negro hero. The killer inside me / John Koethe -- Exact change / David Lehman -- Of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery. Incarceration blues / Wesley Rothman -- Of Robert Frost. Of Gwendolyn Brooks / Jon Davis -- Homage : Gwendolyn Brooks / Ishion Hutchinson -- Some glowing in the common blood / Elizabeth Macklin -- No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader / Michael Ryan -- Old Mary. Go / Tara Betts -- One wants a teller in a time like this. One wants a teller in a time like this / Bob Holman -- A penitent considers another coming of Mary. Mary / Amanda Auchter -- Primer for blacks. The hunger / Dominique Christina -- When grandma goes to the moon / Aaron Samuels -- Pygmies Are pygmies still, though percht on Alps. Cosmic party crasher / Amy Gerstler -- Pygmalion director wishes to enliven production / John Hegley -- Queen of the blues. Queen of the game / Kim Addonizio -- Riders to the blood-red wrath. From Iraq, a tattoo / Jennifer Perrine -- Riot. Stolen sonnet / David Baker -- Gravestones / Asia Calcagno -- Taunting the turkey vultures with love / Rachel DeWoskin -- Softer sounds / Helen Frost -- Beyond it / Liz Lochhead -- Brixton Revo 2011 / Roger Robinson --

The rites for Cousin Vit. Blue finch / Mona Arshi -- Offbeat / Hoa Nguyen -- Cousin / William Stobb -- There are mornings / Dan Sullivan -- Sadie and Maud. Sadie and Maud / Florence Ladd -- Maud and Sadie / Gail Carson Levine -- The second sermon on the Warpland. Medics / Danielle Cadena Deulen -- Advice from Ms. Brooks, with elaborations / Mark Doty -- Reflections on invictus / Cherise A. Pollard -- Bigly in the wild weed / Maureen Seaton -- The sermon on the Warpland. A parable of sorts / Malika Booker -- A song in the front yard. A peek at the back / John Burnside -- My life has been no smaller than my mind / Peter Cooley -- Gap-toothed woman / Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie -- Walthamstow Central / Aisling Fahey -- Our home / Lindsay Hunter -- Troubled / Angela Johnson -- Twelve weeks / Jacob Polley -- Statue / Jon Sands -- Back yard song / Diane Seuss -- Song in the back yard / Evie Shockley -- Careful the blood / Jeanann Verlee -- Somewhere where / Fred Wah -- The sonnet-ballad. Deployed / Nick Lantz -- The names of leaves in war / Jamaal May -- Breaking house / Michele Parker Randall -- Dusk / Virginia Euwer Wolff -- Moon / Timothy Yu -- Speech to the young, speech to the progress-toward. Bird-feeder / Marilyn Nelson -- Still do I keep my look, my identity. I still don't know / Moniza Alvi -- The artist / Raymond Antrobus -- Third infidelity / Hannah Srajer -- Strong men, riding horses. Pasted to stars already / Oni Buchanan -- Strong men, riding horses / Tishani Doshi -- The strong strong men riding strong strong horses after the West / Douglas Kearney -- The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith. Her secret / Patience Agbabi -- One night stand / Teri Cross Davis -- Note to the unconceived / Marty McConnell -- Hot water / Eileen Myles -- Judas / Lawrence Raab -- The narcissist breaks up / Ravi Shankar -- For Gwendolyn Brooks / Dara Wier -- A sunset of the city. Yard sale / Elizabeth Berg -- The sun had dimmed already / Maxine Chernoff -- Somerset / Daniel Donaghy -- A circle finds its way and / Percival Everett -- In honor of Gwendolyn Brooks : a shovel poem / Maria Mazziotti Gillan -- Twang they, And I incline this ear to tin / Fanny Howe -- This feels permanent / Langston Kerman -- Lapse / Dorianne Laux -- Twig by Twig / Lee Martin -- Just a friend after sunset / E. Ethelbert Miller -- Golden shovel / Kamilah Aisha Moon -- Awaiting dawn / Nii Ayikwei Parkes -- One day soon / Linda Pastan -- American realness / Kathleen Rooney -- Travel literature / Fiona Sampson -- Funland / Martha Serpas -- Already / Lee Upton -- Avow / Julie Marie Wade -- Cold sore / Danielle Zipkin -- Throwing out the flowers. Over and over and all / Eleanor Wilner -- To an old black woman, homeless, and indistinct. Necessarily / Yona Harvey -- To be in love. Two poems for Alec / Julia Glass -- Hotel lobby, April evening / Maura Snell -- To be in love / Tony Trigilio -- To black women. She never saw life as hard / Sharon G. Flake -- To the young who want to die. Oath / Bob Hicok -- Truth. What I would ask of Manman Brigitte after seeing the African burial ground / Camara Brown -- No apps for sunlight / Inua Ellams -- The dark hangs heavily / Chris Haven -- True & false / Ellen Doré Watson -- Truth / Indigo Williams -- The vacant lot. The way he lived now / Sue Dymoke -- Memento mori / Philip Gross -- The lot, vacant then / Francine J. Harris -- We real cool. 1950 : Norco, Louisiana / Mary Calvin -- Parisian shuffle / Stuart Dischell -- Because it looked hotter that way / Camille T. Dungy --An American sunrise / Joy Harjo -- As young poets in Chicago / Edward Hirsch -- How cool are we? / Ellen Hopkins -- The old NZ / Gahl Liberzon -- Hansel in college / Tyler Mills -- Cool kids / Dorothy Moore -- Thanks to Miss Brooks / Sharon Olds -- The golden shovel (to bury the ghost) / Haley Patail -- Kriolising Kulcha / Kadija Sesay -- Jessie from the golden shovel / Mags Webster -- We, the Basij / Sholeh Wolpé -- When you have forgotten Sunday : the love story. Orb-weaver spiders, in early spring / Brenda Hillman -- Unforgivable / Alyssa Kelly -- Before that Sunday / Marcus Sedgwick -- A love story / Leona Sevick -- XV. Places never gathered / Dan Beachy-Quick -- You did not know you were Afrika. She shall not be / Wang Ping --

Young Afrikans. Neo-Afronaut anthem / Dexter L. Booth

The real cool / Kimiko Hahn

Non-Brooks golden shovels. Golden shovel / Hana Beachy-Quick

On the other side of that window / Curtis Crisler

Parenthood / Phil Dacey

Last night on earth we go to Wendy's / Kendra DeColo

It takes so little / Sharon Dolin

Sky burial / Nick Flynn

She threw verbs and arrows at my / Anthony Joseph

Death in Brain / Ian Khadan

Middle dreams / Toni Asante Lightfoot

At Johnnie's after basketball practice / Billy Lombardo

The shepherd . . . / Nick Makoha

The road to Wales / Blake Morrison

Immigrant / John O'Connor

Square de la Place Dupleix / Pascale Petit

Social security / Kevin Simmonds

Headway / Dorothea Smartt

Even a broken clock is right twice a day / Lisa Russ Spaar

Robert Johnson's double-edged shovel / David St. John

Poem with endwords by Reginald Shephard / Jean Valentine

Of ownership / Karen McCarthy Woolf

Pedagogy of a whoopin / Avery R. Young

Variation and expansions on the form. Double golden shovel / Raphael Allison

Behind the scenes / Julia Alvarez

Morning (a twisted shovel) / Ellen Bass

Frijolero ex-pats / Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

Sadie and Maud, redux / Marilyn Chin

Golden shovel borrowed from Derek Walcott and Gwendolyn Brooks / Fred D'Aguiar

The devil's own / Calvin Forbes

When a grief has come / David Gilmer

Outside St. Dominic's Priory. Snapshot, July 2015 / Keith Jarrett

People who have no children can be hard / A. Van Jordan

Selected Psalms from the Book of Brooks / Amit Majmudar

Accident / Carol Muske-Dukes

The art of the stroke: / Molly Peacock

Net / Tom Sleigh

Father / Jacinda Townsend

A chat with the endwords / Catherine Wagner

A private service announcement / Buddy Wakefield

That's Mr. Robert Johnson to you / Tyrone Williams.