Memory
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I Miss the Crisp Leaves
I miss the crisp leaves who’ve stolenJoseph’s coat, my now grown kidstoddling through an acre of pumpkinson the vine, wandering the corn mazein the dark, the scary hayride, hot chocolate after around the fire. I don’t miss Minnesota’s mosquitoeswith their alien proboscis ride alongsraised welts on my bayou-tested skin.Summer waited for the Fourth whileJune poured Continue reading
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Gone
I don’t have a memory like a sieve:I have a memory like the big asscolander you use to drain spaghetti with the huge holes you could drive a whole day right through and out of sight, with all its names faces dates flavors aromas chocolate ice cream stains down your shirt the kissthat made you Continue reading
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The Man Who Knew Godot
Long ago when I first started as an undergraduate I was at a bar speaking to an old man and told him I was an English major and he asked me to recite a poem. I couldn’t. Maybe I could manage Poe’s The Bells for I had that by heart once. Memorizing poetry was a Continue reading
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Ad Odd Fellows Memorial Day
An excerpt of a longer piece originally published on Toulouse Street – Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. I was born in 1957 and so I am reckoned by some one of the last of the baby boomers, that generation borne by the parents who went through World War II. I grew up in Continue reading
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The Old Man and the R
All I managed so far today in NYC is coffee, the Strand Bookstore (but only the first floor where poetry is), lunch and back in bed in my hostel closet with my feet up. Not ruling out a nap before I leave to meet the kids at 3:00. I am not the mad dog Americano Continue reading
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William Burroughs would like a word (or two)
I remember 22 and I don’t mind dying. I always had one last 1957 silver certificate folded in my wallet, coins for the phone, and the way to the next whiskey bar. Repeat after me: 504-522-9771. Manias magnificent opening night after night. The curtain of purple cannot mute the applause in my head. Repeat after Continue reading
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Yuletide Miracles
Lifted from an old Wet Bank Guide post, during the Long Exile. But I believe in Christmas miracles. A decade ago, my three-year old daughter fell in love with a character called Rugby Tiger, from an obscure Muppet’s movie call the Christmas Toy. Having Rugby Tiger was her only Christmas wish, the secret she shared Continue reading
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Bohemian Dreams
The online French Quarter Journal published a story On the Origin of Jackson Square Artists: “They were a rowdy bunch” and I immediately thought of my father, Sidney J. Folse, Jr. A senior architect at the prominent local firm of Curtis & Davis, from the age before computer driven design when architects had to draw Continue reading
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Churn and Taxis
The back of a Toyota Uber pales against the Rocket V-8 Cab Rasta madman who took our drunken asses back to Carrollton when the green streetcar failed to appear on Canal. His rattletrap blue GM something rang like a Jamaican sleigh over the potholes, & when his glove box popped open, spilling fat spliffs into Continue reading
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The Slow Noon Burn of June 16
Originally posted on June 20, 2009 on my Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans blog Canal Street in the slow noon burn of June. Thin dribbles of tourists pass up and down, hug the narrow ledge of shade along the buildings as if some abyss yawned at the curb. A handful of hotel 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, 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 