Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Flashlight
    Flashlight
    Flashlight
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Flashlight

    By Laura Boss

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    'Laura Boss proves she is an audacious poet. She succeeds in writing risk-taking poems that are full of ironic and wry humour. The poems speak with the self-deprecating, down to earth voice of a sensual woman. This is a poet whose increasingly sure hand guides her to handle her explosive material with the deftness of a high wire artist. I love this book. I love these poems. I know that anyone who starts to read Flashlight will not be able to put it down. What energy, what effervescence, what a tour de force! Anyone who thinks poetry can't save your life should read this book' - Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award winner for "All That Lies Between Us" (Guernica Editions).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGuernica
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781550715286
    Flashlight
    Author

    Laura Boss

    Laura Boss, a national award-winning poet, is a first prize winner in Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Poetry Contest and, in 1998, was one of ten finalists in the country in PSA's Alice Fay Di Castagnola contest for a manuscript. She is also the founder and editor of Lips poetry magazine. She lives in New Jersey.

    Related to Flashlight

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Starr Power

      Mar 23, 2021

      Starr Power
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Home of Two Cliffs

      Mar 1, 2021

      The Home of Two Cliffs
      9 min read

    • Article

      Patrick Mason.

      Jan 2, 2020

      Patrick Mason.
      6 min read

    • Article

      Linton Kwesi Johnson

      Apr 10, 2023

      Linton Kwesi Johnson
      5 min read

    • Article

      Adjoa Andoh

      May 1, 2023

      Adjoa Andoh
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dave Grohl

      Feb 1, 2021

      Dave Grohl
      8 min read

    • Article

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • Article

      Refusenik

      Jan 1, 2021

      I was promised a girl held her glossy image, shatterable, ice skating on a Soviet pond. I’d never seen snow but for the cut out paper flakes hung in school hallways. I only knew rain as intermittent confusion. Los Angeles in the ’80s. We set fire to

      7 min read

    • Article

      Ben Okri

      Apr 25, 2022

      Ben Okri
      5 min read

    • Article

      Emmylou Harris

      Aug 16, 2021

      Emmylou Harris
      5 min read

    • Article

      Al Murray

      Oct 23, 2023

      Al Murray
      5 min read

    • Article

      Beverley Knight

      Aug 28, 2023

      Beverley Knight
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Nonfiction No. 11

      Dec 7, 2021

      The Art of Nonfiction No. 11
      26 min read

    • Article

      Too Late To Stop Now

      Sep 1, 2021

      When I write I like to listen to the same song over and over again, although need to listen feels a more accurate phrase. This repeated listening returns me to a place where I can see the next thing I want to say, although of course I don’t mean see

      13 min read

    • Article

      James Blunt Looks Back: ‘After A Few Days At Boarding School I Asked, “When Are My Parents Coming Back?”’

      Oct 21, 2023

      Born in Hampshire in 1974, James Blunt is a singer-songwriter. He studied at Bristol University and became an officer in the British army, serving with Nato forces during the Kosovo war in 1999. He left the military in 2002 and released his debut alb

      4 min read

    • Article

      It Costs Nothing To Be Kind

      Nov 20, 2022

      LIFE’S MORE FUN WHEN YOU CAN HAVE A LAUGH I’ve always tried to help people. I worked with Samaritans – a helpline support service – when I lived in London in the late ’60s. I absolutely loved it. When I got back to Australia, I’d been away three yea

      2 min read

    • Article

      Forever Fred

      Nov 26, 2019

      Forever Fred
      4 min read

    • Article

      Love Story

      Feb 4, 2023

      Love Story
      4 min read

    • Article

      Billy Bragg

      Oct 11, 2021

      Billy Bragg
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Flashlight

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Flashlight - Laura Boss

      Acknowledgments

      Airborne

      Listening to the Reports of JFK Jr.’s Plane Missing After Leaving Caldwell Airport

      Years ago at Caldwell Airport,

      I left in a tiny plane

      my sixteen-year-old was piloting

      The two of us in this one-engine seemingly

      paper plane he had pushed back with

      one hand while checking it before we left

      I did not want to be in this plane,

      but it was just after I had separated

      from his father, and my guilt was

      making me try to please this son

      I had so displeased by leaving his father

      The guy I was going with at the time

      had put his gold cross around my neck

      and was crying as we left – though

      his fear would not let him come up with us

      My son said I was brave –

      All his friends who had come up with him

      were either screaming or throwing up at this

      point in the trip

      We circled over New York City

      We headed up to Maine where

      my older son was going to school

      There was no control tower person, but

      my son landed after a few more circles

      Coming back from Maine that night

      my son told me to scan the horizon for planes

      too near to us

      He told me I was right –

      He shouldn’t be flying at night – that

      everything looked the same at night

      He had me hold the map which he circled

      with his flashlight – trying to find out

      exactly where we were

      I asked him if he had another battery for his

      flashlight – or even another flashlight –

      He said, No

      I told him, I’d buy him another flashlight when we got back

      He told me if for any reason he passes out

      or hits his head, I should click on a center

      radio station and they’d tell me how

      to fly the plane in

      When we finally land, I ask him if his father has

      ever gone up with him

      No, he replies. He says he’s not ready

      (I’m not ready either I tell myself

      and I also think that my former husband

      is smarter than I thought he was)

      But I also think how women try to please males –

      to so often do things they don’t want to do

      just to please a man – whether it be family or a lover –

      And I think how Carolyn Bessette

      who according to the news and family reports

      did not want JFK Jr. to fly his own plane

      and how she and even her older sister tried to please him –

      to show him that they did believe in him

      by climbing into that private plane

      And I know how lucky I was when I got off that small

      one-engine plane at Caldwell Airport so many years ago

      And I think how unlucky those other women were when

      leaving Caldwell Airport Friday night

      that good intentions, guilt, and, yes, and even love

      cannot always keep one airborne

      I Wanted to Go to Princeton

      I wanted to go to Princeton

      but I wasn’t smart enough

      And anyway they didn’t take girls

      in those days

      I wanted to go to Princeton

      but I didn’t

      And anyway it was my brother’s

      job to go to a good school

      or at least get a scholarship

      to a decent school even

      if it were not Princeton

      And it was my job if I couldn’t go to

      Princeton to at least marry a guy

      who had gone to Princeton

      So when I was at a female school

      Douglass twenty minutes from Princeton

      I dated Princeton guys not Rutgers

      guys whenever I could though I had

      to take a less attractive looking

      Princeton guy than I would have

      if I had been dating a Rutgers guy

      and the Princeton guy traded up in looks

      if he took out a Douglass girl rather

      than a Radcliffe or Vassar girl

      And I could have married one guy from Princeton

      his name was Freddie and he was serious

      and thin and wrote me stacks of

      letters on stationery with a Princeton logo

      and when his Princeton envelopes arrived,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1