Laura Boss
Ode to My Glasses
You are the first thing
I reach for when I wake
You make the world snap into
focus from the London fog haze
surrounding me
You have a strong sense of style
with your narrow frame and
your subtle designer monogram
And at times I haven't been able to resist
sleeping with you on me all night
What They Called Him
---for Gregory Corso
Allen Ginsberg called him
the best poet of the
last quarter of the 20th Century
Other poets called him
L' Infant Terrible of Poetry or
even the Bad Boy of Poetry
I called him my fiance
since he had given me an opal
ring and told me were engaged
though we would never actually marry
he told me when he gave me that ring--
And since I had fallen in love
with his poem Marriage
that I had taught as an
adjunct in English 102, I thought
he would be a man I would also
fall in love with
Though it took awhile to realize
that some who knew him well
called him a user of drugs
And it took me even longer to learn
so many years ago
that someone called a user of drugs
could not help using everything
and everyone near him
Laura Boss, founder and editor of Lips, is a first prize winner of PSA's Gordon Barber Poetry Contest. She has received three NJSCA Poetry Fellowships. Her most recent book is Flashlight ( Guernica). Her poems have appeared in The New YorkTimes. She is co-editor with John Gallaher of Time is a Toy: Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt ( University of Akron) forthcoming in 2014.
Ode to My Glasses
You are the first thing
I reach for when I wake
You make the world snap into
focus from the London fog haze
surrounding me
You have a strong sense of style
with your narrow frame and
your subtle designer monogram
And at times I haven't been able to resist
sleeping with you on me all night
What They Called Him
---for Gregory Corso
Allen Ginsberg called him
the best poet of the
last quarter of the 20th Century
Other poets called him
L' Infant Terrible of Poetry or
even the Bad Boy of Poetry
I called him my fiance
since he had given me an opal
ring and told me were engaged
though we would never actually marry
he told me when he gave me that ring--
And since I had fallen in love
with his poem Marriage
that I had taught as an
adjunct in English 102, I thought
he would be a man I would also
fall in love with
Though it took awhile to realize
that some who knew him well
called him a user of drugs
And it took me even longer to learn
so many years ago
that someone called a user of drugs
could not help using everything
and everyone near him
Laura Boss, founder and editor of Lips, is a first prize winner of PSA's Gordon Barber Poetry Contest. She has received three NJSCA Poetry Fellowships. Her most recent book is Flashlight ( Guernica). Her poems have appeared in The New YorkTimes. She is co-editor with John Gallaher of Time is a Toy: Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt ( University of Akron) forthcoming in 2014.