Flose Boursiquot, a spoken word artist and community organizer, has released her first book of poetry titled Close Your Eyes, Now Breathe. Since its Amazon.com release on January 6th of this year, the book has made #1 Hot New Release in Caribbean + Latin American Poetry everyday. It has also found a home on Amazon's top 5 Hot New Releases in all poetry, even making its way to #4 a couple of times. It's safe to say Close Your Eyes, Now Breathe is a must read this year.
Unlike the author's bubbly personality and worldly idealism, CYENB offers content that is dark, defiant, and emotionally charged. The book covers sexual trauma, anxiety, race, love, death, life, nature, feminism and even finds time for comedy. In one piece, Flose recalls her final days as a college student where she spent much of her time partying and insinuates she was rewarded a degree for it. For those music lovers who have not quite fallen in love with poetry, Flose offers shorter pieces that serve as musical interludes while other pieces are longer and reflect her spoken word roots.
Flose roots herself in justice and reflects the pain felt after the murders of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and the list goes on, in her piece The Pains I Cannot Heal. She vividly outlines the grief felt when a person of color cannot validate their existence in our brutal society. The feelings of hopelessness and deep sorrow that Flose outlines is not foreign to those of us who continue to find ourselves broken in the face of police brutality.
For Flose, this book is about dealing with our human pain. She believes we often live in a world that requires us to be one version of who we truly are, if we are lucky, maybe two. CYENB reminds us that we are allowed to be complex individuals who sometimes have to deal with lasting pain. Most of all, it's a reminder to release the grief that sometimes holds us captive.
CYENB is available for purchase on Amazon.
The first book release party and reading is set to take place at Wrythe Studio in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, February 4th at 1pm.
To book Flose at your next event, visit https://letitflose.com/bookings/.
