cryptical envelopment
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Bukowski’s Bluebird
Not only words in his mouthbut what look like feathers,clamped tight in his teethlike an anxious gambler’s cigarette.Cat eyed and smiling at the bar,he caught beauty perched on a stooland swallowed it in one bite.Now odd notes issue from his throat.His words emerge as song.First appeared onThe Dead Mule Schoolof Southern Literature Continue reading
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Sing, Goddess
I decided to reread Emily Wilson’s Odyssey before I consider seeing the movie and then start again decided well why not read her Illiad first because my eyes are always bigger than my plate. I never thought I’d fall into a list of men and ships until I read Emily Wilson. I dreaded Book Two for… Continue reading
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Portal
Some days the forest is not far enough. I can still hear the cars speeding past just outside the gate and the distant rumble of the interstate that bisects the park. It is too close to what troubles, to what waits later, and chances are I have a list of things to do on the… Continue reading
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Birth
Shame on all the advocates and aggregators of poetry that they have not gifted this one to the Internet. Birth Milovz CzeslawFor the first time he sees light. The world is garish light. He doesn’t know these are shrieks Of garish birds. Their hearts beat quickly Under enormous leaves. He doesn’t know birds live In… Continue reading
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The Poet and The Machine
Will it swallow us whole as it has devoured all knowledge ever printed or filmed, every song ever recorded, as it digests your question and feeds it to build the threshing linkages driving it ever onward without a throttle? Let poets step forward and cast the first stone into the works. Sonnets to Orpheus: The… Continue reading
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My Initiation in the Mysteries of the City
That memory is sharp and clear because I recognize it now as the first level of my initiation into the mysteries of the city, my first step toward leaving Robert E. Lee Boulevard behind, entering a broader and deeper city I was sheltered from even on those crosstown shopping trips and by my Uptown education. I… Continue reading
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Killing Me Softly with K-9s
I go to the forest to manage the stress of living in this dysfunctional city and this cracker-ass backwards state and this disintegrating country. I go to hear song birds and the cries of the water birds, to the chorus frogs celebrating the puddly places after it rains, for the quiet when it comes. I… Continue reading
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An Ode-ious History of New Orleans
I can’t think of anywhere I could try to publish this so I’m putting it up here. After the “Beautiful Times” and “The Capital”sections of Czeslas Milosz’s “A Treatise on Poetry”“I remember everything.”—”Natura”, MiloszThe calas woman calling over the muddy road,mounted by her tignon like the loa of womanhood. German bakers shape the baguettes, smell… Continue reading
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Ekphrasis: The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa Through the lens of imminent disaster Fuji—the anchoring backdrop of ten thousand pastoral moments–—is a disinterested bystander. The mountainous water towers over the iconic peak and the doomed boats. The sailor’s backs are turned to the crest of threatening fingers, their hands clasped in muscular prayer… 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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