I live in a city enchanted by slow decay,
ancient brick sidewalks shaped to
the leisurely motion of sodden Earth
following the river to the Gulf.
Live oak roots punctuate broken pavement
colonnaded and arched into shade.
Houses lean into their history, list
so my caster chair slow rolls into sunset
away from practicalities on my desk.
Viscous air, thick with humidity
and centuries. Insatiable green reconquista
cautioning us against attachment to
our improvements, cat’s claw creeper
overreaching roofs, invading kitchen cabinets.
To persist you must be rooted like cypress
rising elegantly, defiant to water and storm
not succumb to the delicious miasma
of cocktail and Creole cooking. Be a second line
bass drum celebrating the neighborhood
the dancing family and the echoing dead.
Go down slow. Be a tour-bus worthy ruin.
Go Down Slow
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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