Memory
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The Last Days of May
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 a neighborhood full of fathers who had served in World War II, some later in Korea, and frankly I… Continue reading
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East of the End of the World
An hour east of the End of the World sign somewhere just inside Delacroix a city is vanishing into America, dissolving wholesale in a Starbucks blender, as if buried in the contaminated sediment of The River; a Las Vegas scale, prime-time vanishing act in which a city is transformed into a waterfront Disney attraction, minus… Continue reading
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A Factory of Reinvention
The first time Sam (her chosen name)went down to the riverI stayed on the stepstipped a musicianfor St. James Infirmarywhile her husband Davescattered Rebecca(her given name)into the Mississippi. New Orleansis a factoryof reinvention.Come as you are.Be who you wish.Leave by the river. I only called herby her pen name–rather her personna–in the boisterous bohemia of… Continue reading
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This is me, is us
The Challenger shuttle, the first Gulf War, 9/11, the second Gulf War, COVID, Trump. These were universal or near universal cataclysms that shaped generations. This quote is me, is us, in the middle 1960s, facing the lurking horrors we were schooled to, watching fire fights on the news in black and white while somewhere in… Continue reading
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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
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 