I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,    

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

Reflection:

One of my very first attempts at writing a poem was a Golden Shovel poem, and I think this might be my favorite Golden Shovel poem I've ever written. In Golden Shovel poetry, the author takes a short poem from another poet or a line from a poem and creates a new poem using the words from the previous poem. The words are arranged in a single line, word by word, in the right margin. I have provided an example of my own Golden Shovel poem below based on Ada Limon’s poem “How to Triumph Like a Girl” (1976). The bold words are from Limon’s original poem, which I included.

Writing this poem was close to my heart. As I wrote, I thought of the great strength of women and the continued struggle and fight that we have to be seen, heard, and treated with dignity and respect. I wanted to write a piece for my daughter to advise her on how to live in a world where she may feel dismissed, ignored, disrespected, or beaten down. I want her to know that she has strength and that I believe she can do anything she sets her mind to.