cryptical envelopment
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Beautiful Things That Come Late in Life
I’m reading straight through Louise Glück, wondering how I missed her decades ago, why she didn’t leap out at me from some anthology, before I settled into reading the same dozen books over and over for the middle-class, mortgage part of my life, too busy with the kids. There are a raft of poems in… Continue reading
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El Nopal (39)
A better fortune teller confided once it meant: no one comes to see the prickly pear until it blossoms… Continue reading
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Venice’s Relentless Tides
Fuck whoever is behind the crossbar.This is not about who was crucified and why. This is introduction to Western Civilization. Read the syllabus, do the work or you’ll nevermake it out of the auditoriums.This is not a safe space. This is the world you aspire to inherit in all its glorious horrorsa British Museum of… Continue reading
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His Harem
My Queen accused her borderline doddering monarch of cultivating a “harem” of admirers. This was never my intent, although I was most pleased to discover poetry could still have this effect upon women in this algorithmic age. I must confess the attraction is mutual, because I’m only emotionally and physically attracted to women who are… Continue reading
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Back to the Island
When the days are empty of work except for what I choose–reading and writing, some chores, the garden–I take long walks in the forest arboretum not to raise my heart rate but to lower it, to follow–after the admonition from yoga–the breath of everything. Lately my thoughts roam unleashed there, thinking of natural beauty in… Continue reading
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Venus v. the Barbarians
I’m reading Bill Lavender’s book of poems, City of God, which combines commentary on our modern world and his thoughts on Augustine’s old book. at the same time I have found a blog, Via Negative, which frequently speaks to or shares images of the ancient Venuses whichever on my own mind of late. And somehow… Continue reading
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Otherly Love
Love. Lust. Limerance. Not adolescent or transient infatuation. The word I want is hiding from me. The ancient Greeks had a long list. Not Agape, the word for familial affection or loving kindness appropriated by the Greco-Romanized Christians; Philia is closer, that strong attraction of mind and heart as among best friends, which Plato thought… Continue reading
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Carry Water
The sagging pink salvia at far left and the showy Peruvian lily on the other end with its brown limbs struggle as our new to us monsoon washes away remembering to water in the morning. I must be more mindful of their needs now the gastly heat has arrived. I must take care of them… Continue reading
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Entropy
Death is never too soon among us,said the forest.— Jessica Morey-Collins I.If the universe is continuous expansionhow will the entropy of old age play out?Will it be Slothrop’s temporal bandwidthapproaching zero, or a slow dissolution into an ever-expanding aurora of star stuff.A tiny nova perhaps, a final prayerof light out towards whatever is hoveringin the… Continue reading
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 