The elephant is malcontented. Captivity
in my imagination is stultifying. They pace
relentlessly, trumpeting and trampling
their straw littered concrete savannah.
I was told not to think of them, and
they would not trouble my nights but
they’re as present as not-thinking-
about-them makes them out to be
because they are real. We've met
and I have gently touched their skin,
seen the passion in their eyes dreaming
the freedom to roam where they would.
We are the clever animals with thumbs,
histories and foresight. Instinct says
I could free them but experience suggests
I do it carefully so no one is trampled.
The Elephant In His Room
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 
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