In celebration of the 75th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks’s landmark book Annie Allen, Brooks Permissions and Crescendo Literary invited Chicagoland students in grades 9-12 to write a golden shovel focused on the poem “Beverly Hills, Chicago” by Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks.
A golden shovel is a type of poem that borrows lines from an existing poem to make a new, original poem. The form was created by the contemporary poet Terrance Hayes.
Nora Rogozinski
Jones College Prep
9th/10th grade category
The picture-perfect colonial home is for them, not for we.
Streets speak loud on this block and they say
We speak in vain and cynicism, ourselves
But for what do we feel we cannot be fortunate?
We are not rich, but we are “to”
A promise of character in ways they could never be
Where past these streets we are driving
In our eyes not love or hate, rather just trying to get by
Decades passing, yet I see the same Beverly Hills today.
Jocelyn Hays
Lane Tech High School
11th/12th grade category
“Look at them”
If only the tides rolled even
in the city. The
trees know their suffering as the leaves
gather in lonely patches in the fall.
The birds flock and fly down.
When winter comes, they want in.
If only the warm ones could be lovelier.
The change in season reveals the patterns.
Things never change here.
Their coats let the cold in as they
shiver beneath the hustle that does not make
space for their ache. What once was excellent
comfort is now covered in ice— corpses
of dreams laying, silent, among
their solemn dwellings. The
golden look for what is expensive,
but they forget the names of the fallen, not their flowers.
They knew a place of love, of radiating warmth— but
now it dwindles, a whispering echo. You feel it
in the desperation of their stare. The city is
loud but blind. Misery speaks only
in mumbles. It feels natural
when it’s not our pain. We pretend that
we are separate. But their cold is ours, while we
have our sun of immunity. Still, we should
look at them. Hear them. The lucky ones think
it can’t be them. They don’t know we
survive by chance, not by worth. What they have
is hunger. And our kind glances are not
the answer. It is not enough.
