Golden Shovel with Audre Lorde

this is a poem inspired by a poem

Today’s poem is a golden shovel poem inspired by Audre Lorde’s poem “Outside".”

A golden shovel poem, also known as a “21st century sonnet” was created by National Book Award winning US poet Terrance Hayes in 2010 as a way to honor the great Gwendolyn Brooks. I love how the golden shovel format is born of the Black poetic community and our desire to honor our Black elders.

The rule of the golden shovel is simple: borrow lines from someone else’s poem to create a new poem, using each word as the end-word.

For this poem, I’m taking a thematic element from her poem and expanded it to explore a different trauma response from a speculative perspective on our collective current reality.

Outside
by Audre Lorde

Of what I move
toward and through
and what I need
to leave behind me
for most of all I am
blessed within my selves
who are come to make our shattered faces
whole